Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade, a musical idea, no matter how innovative, is threatened.

You get a show where people are jumping up and dancing, but it's not a critical event in the sense of profound catharsis. Essentially it's celebratory.

A whole generation of young whites have involved themselves with traditional Negro music.

Music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential.

And when I met Cecil Taylor it was a complete transformation of musical identities. All the tenets that I had grown up with were thrown out the window.

Yes, the audience is so important to Negro music, especially the element of call and response.

All the tenets that I had grown up with were thrown out the window.

I find that here in the States, audiences are generally less knowledgeable, from the cognitive point of view, though they are emotionally more receptive.

I can't see any separation between my music and my life. I play pretty much race music: its about what happened to my father, to me, and what can happen to my kids.

In rap music, even though the element of poetry is very strong, so is the element of the drum, the implication of the dance. Without the beat, its commercial value would certainly be more tenuous.

Rap actually took root in the Negro community, and then in the Hispanic community, long before it impacted on the larger American community as a whole.

The machines are too dull when weare lion-poems that move & breathe.

Just because someone doesn't respond...doesn't mean they are not Listening.

Life is a series of waves to be embraced and overcome.

I don't miss the obligation to be opinionated, but I do regret the chance to share a joy.

Nature, for me is raw and dangerous and difficult and beautiful and unnerving.

I have a medical history folder that's a lot thicker than most.

once a policy, like a set of steel rails, had been laid down for him by his superiors, his obedience ran along it unswerving.

Sit down, close your eyes, and think about dogs for ten minutes. On a very clear, physiological, and neurochemical level, your body is changed by these really positive thoughts.

Were it only to learn benevolence to humankind, we should be merciful to other creatures.

If I declare it to be so, then this is a portrait.