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American music culture is black culture.

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

In America, music is more tightly categorized.

I think America concedes that true American music has sprung from the Negro.

Since the age of 12, all my musical thinking has been influenced by Afro-American music.

If I were to call it black music, that would be untrue. I don't know what that is, unless it would be some African drums or something.

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

The way popular music is categorized and formatted cuts down on everyone's options. And although people don't talk about it, there are a lot of issues of race determining musical categories of what's rock, R&B, or even folk. It ends up restricting creativity.

Music has no race. It appeals to everybody.

Negro music and culture are intrinsically improvisational, existential. Nothing is sacred. After a decade, a musical idea, no matter how innovative, is threatened.