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

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.

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.

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.

For the first time in four billion years a living creature had contemplated himself and heard with a sudden, unaccountable loneliness, the whisper of the wind in the night reeds.

Put your f***ing finger down now before I break it off.

At one point, I was just perceived as only being angry, but now I'm being perceived as angry, peaceful, and spiritual.

A man who opens a door for a woman or gives up his seat for her-even offering to carry something! Those are country manners that never go out of style.

I think, any politician, you have to hold them to their word. And conservatives run on fiscal conservatism. .

I once received a cape that was made from the little purple bags that Crown Royal Whisky comes in.

If I have someone who believes in me, I can move mountains.

One cannot lay a foundation by scattering stones, nor is a reputation for good work to be got by strewing volumes about the world.

Do you understand that it's impossible to please God in any way other than wholehearted surrender?

Anybody can wish for riches, and most people do, but only a few know that a definite plan, plus a burning desire for wealth, are the only dependable means of accumulating wealth