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Essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns.

True music must repeat the thought and inspirations of the people and the time.

I never presumed that a technique of composition or an idea was so special that just using it would guarantee the quality of the music.

I discovered that the most interesting music of all was made by simply lining the loops in unison, and letting them slowly shift out of phase with other.

For a long time, I believed that a great piece of music on its own could do more to stir the soul than any other single art form.

I wanted to keep pushing the musical ideas I had about jazz, music from Africa and the Caribbean.

Going back and forth between Western Arabic and African countries clearly created the various musical backgrounds I could have and obviously influenced my professional attitude, my way of approaching both music composition and singing, particularly phrasing.

I have come up with very creative ideas that really didn't work with the song I was currently composing.

I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough. So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords. That was my original mission.

Earlier in my life, I performed a lot of music. Some of it because I felt it was a demonstration, or a representation of certain intellectual concepts that were very exciting and important.