Negro Music And Culture Are Intrinsically Improvisational,

So, Rap Has That Quality, For Youth Anyway; It's A Kind Of Blues Element. It's Physical, Almost Gymnastic. It Speaks To You Organically. Rap Grows Out Of What Young People Really Are Today, Not Only Black Youth, But White - Everybody.

Music Is A Language, And It's Like A Dictionary That Has A Lot Of Words, But If You Limited Yourself To A Couple Of Definitions You Would Be Illiterate. If One Limits Oneself To A Peculiar Definition Like 'new Music,' 'avant-garde,' Or Something Like That, I Think It's Like Cutting Out Half The Dictionary.

Yes, The Audience Is So Important To Negro Music, Especially The Element Of Call And Response.

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.

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.