You can be a star here in Europe and not be known at all in the United States.

We need self-confidence in our ability to build Africa. I trust in Mali and I trust in music.

You just have to try before thinking that you can't.

There are some things around us that are not actually useful. I didn't know that before. It's very new for me to understand. That became my way of writing: I can see also the new myself.

It's a great experience just to understand that finally being well known is not the most important thing.

The interesting thing for me is to put together all my influences and all my experiences I got through my traveling with my father.

When you are able to make a living with your job as an artist, that means you have an audience and you have to thank this audience.

Sometimes there are painters or very famous artists who start to become artists after they are dead because an audience or a public know about their art after they die.

When you have a chance to be an artist with an audience in your lifetime, you have to say thanks to your audience. That's a great thing. That's the best thing that can happen to an artist.

American audiences don't react in the same way as European ones to African music because, I think, Europeans listen to this music through all the festivals that exist here.

I've been in contact with music since I was four or five years old through my father, because of the interest he had in music and all his musical skills. I finally managed to make that my profession.

Whatever story you create in your life, you deserve your own “Karma” be it good or bad…. - Cocoy McCoy -

Animals are good human beings and human beings are bad animals

Now, I only play very occasionally, and in fact, more piano than clarinet or sax.

Economy: that what you played had to have meaning, not just a bunch of sixteenth notes. You learn to make better choices of notes as you get older.

Those people who occupy a territory determine the nature of the society in that region.

(The) chain of command has failed over the years, obviously, for a lot of reasons.

The reason I can do what I do on stage is because I couldn't fake it.

I still deliver like a midwife

I'm a feminist because I believe in women... it's a heavy word, feminism, but it's not one I think we should run from. I'm proud to be a feminist.

Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds your stuff to any degree of fineness.