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.

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.

Every person is an island in the sea of humanity.

It is sometimes necessary to use unnecessary words like thank you and please just to make life prettier.

no concept of danger, reality, flow or compassion. you can feel the despair escaping from their machines, their lives as hopeless and as numbed as yours.

If you don't hit the target, you're never gonna score

The best thing about waking up early is seeing the sun rise.

The types of thoughts that you think create a state of mind. The reason you think the thoughts you do results from your level of power.

Law is stable the societies we are speaking of are progressive. The greater or less happiness of a people depends on the degree of promptitude with which the gulf is narrowed.

When one is in love with existence one feels such blessing, such bliss, that it is natural to bow down in deep gratitude.

I am super-Italian, not even European - Italian. And this is very precise. It's like houses. Over time they stabilize themselves in the terrain. I am still at the first step of a long staircase.

Russia can offer state-of-the-art technology, .. For example, we can help other countries launch space devices such as satellites.