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.

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.

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.

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.

I place solitude in a frame on my desk and call it, the one I love.

I am the Richest man on earth because I am the Happiest man on earth. After all, isn’t Happiness the Greatest Wealth in Life? - RVM.

We beg you to save young America from the blight of race prejudice. Do not bind the children within the narrow circles of your own lives.

The auld wife sat at her ivied door, (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese) A thing she had frequently done before; And her spectacles lay on her apron'd knees.

I enjoy sports, and love being involved in any outdoor sport from volleyball to softball. I'm not being immodest when I say I'm a natural athlete.

In this age of Twitter and Snark every misstep gets posted online in twelve seconds.

I stand by every mistake I've ever made, so judge away.

I regard Duryodhana and his party as the baser impulses in man, and Arjuna and his party as the higher impulses.

While you can fill every heart as your own full of laughter loud as gold and passion quick as silver.