This Music Heals People Because Music Is

I Didn't Have A Philosophical Understanding Of Music Until I Came To New York. I Didn't Understand How It Applied To My Kind And My Generation. I Thought It Was Just Old People Talking.

The Blues. It Runs Through All American Music. Somebody Bending The Note. The Other Is The Two-beat Groove. It's In New Orleans Music, It's In Jazz, It's In Country Music, It's In Gospel.

I Travel Up And Down The Country And I've Been All Around The Middle Of America For Many Years. Middle America Is Not One Big Mass Of People With A Proverbial Beer In Its Hand, Keeping The Country Down. That Is Not My Experience Of It And I Don't Labor Under That Misconception. And We Have A Long Tradition Of Coming Together Through Music In Our Country.

The Majority Of The High Schools And The Public Schools In N.y.c. Don't Even Have Band Programs. Hip-hop In A Lot Of Ways Is An Outgrowth Of A Lack Of Instruments And A Desire To Play Music, So We Can't Really Fault The Kids For That.

I Have Absolutely No Idea What My Generation Did To Enrich Our Democracy. We Dropped The Ball. We Entered A Period Of Complacency And Closed Our Eyes To The Public Corruption Of Our Democracy.