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California is full of Mexican culture and Mexican music.

Latin music has many international influences - pop, rock, country, Brazilian sounds, and alternative styles.

Certainly being in California has encouraged a sustained commitment to rethinking the nature, purposes, and relevance of the contemporary arts, specifically music, for a society which by and large seems to manage quite well without them.

I love California. It has such a strong contribution to the history of culture, and popular culture. For better and worse, of course. Even the worst can be interesting to some degree sometimes for somebody creative.

I've grown to love California: It's the dream of every English musician to come here and work in the sunshine. To walk up Sunset Boulevard, knowing you're going to make music - that's it.

One night I'll be in Los Angeles and it'll be a Latin crowd, and then another night I'll go to Fresno and it'll be an all-black crowd. To me, that's the beauty of the music.

The power of music in Spanish is so strong, that I couldn't stay away from it any longer.

Mexican music runs through my veins. I loved it. Growing up, my father didn't allow us to listen to English music at home. That's all I heard. I had no choice.

My first memories of music are of my mother playing Dominican music in the house because my parents love to dance. They love to throw parties and dance, so there was a lot Latin music in the house.

Once I tried to find myself as a musician and a composer, I went back and saw that there was something special about Puerto Rican music. I knew that before, but had never sat down and thought about it. The more I learned about it, the more it found its way into the music I was writing.