Music And Culture Are Intrinsically Improvisational, Existential.

So, I Was Just A Young Guy, Maybe With An Idea, And Cecil Taylor, Himself A Rebel, Would Take A Chance On A Guy Like Me. It Turned Out To Be A Very Symbiotic Partnership. I Learned A Lot From Him.

In America, For A Brief Time, People Who Followed John Coltrane Were Studied And Considered Important, But It Didn't Last Long. The Result Is That The Kind Of Music I Played In The '60's Is Completely Dismissed In This Country As A Wrong Turn, A Suicidal Effort.

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.

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.

To Some Degree, Yeah, Because I Have To Play A Certain Number Of Originals That Might Be Considered Avant-garde Material. I Realize Though, That Only A Few People In The Audience Actually Know What That Music Is, Or Understand It.