Creativity Quote by Solomon Burke

Grooving "in the same direction" sounds like camaraderie, but Solomon Burke’s real punch is the clause that follows: "a path and a direction that had no programming". Coming from a musician who lived through the era when Black popular music was routinely packaged, sorted, and sold by gatekeepers, "programming" is a loaded word. It’s radio playlists, label marketing plans, genre silos, and the quiet expectation that artists stay legible to the industry’s categories. Burke isn’t romanticizing chaos; he’s describing a kind of artistic movement that existed before the map was printed.

Invoking Roy Hamilton sharpens the point. Hamilton was a vocal powerhouse whose influence rippled through soul and pop, but whose career also shows how easily a singular Black voice could be celebrated, then sidelined, depending on shifting commercial appetites. Burke aligns himself with Hamilton as fellow travelers pushing toward an emerging sound that hadn’t been standardized yet. They weren’t merely "innovating" in the inspirational-poster sense; they were operating in a market that hadn’t figured out how to monetize what they were doing.

The subtext is equal parts pride and warning. Pride: the thrill of being early, when music is still a living argument rather than a product category. Warning: once "programming" arrives, it narrows the future. The line reads like a veteran’s remembrance of the moment before the industry turned discovery into a schedule.