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

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.

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

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.

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.

We tell the dead to rest in peace, when we should worry about the living to live in peace.

Greater than atomic power is the power of love. Alas, we use it so sparingly!

Persistence is a writer's best friend disguised as a bully.

To deny, to believe, and to doubt well, are to a man what the race is to a horse.

Who has not for the sake of his reputation sacrificed himself?

My responsibility is simply being who I am and not buying into any projection as real. No projection is finally real, but projection does play a very important role.

The ready apology covers a multitude of social sins.

Information can be passed from one to another, like a silver dollar. There's absolutely no wisdom except what you learn for yourself.

Is it possible to be anything in this country without being a politician?

For me, I sort of felt like it was kind of a fairytale... but an interesting one. I don't know of anybody who has had a romance quite like this, but I certainly know people who have stuck it out.