I grew up in the funk, rock and roll, blues and r&b tradition, and I came to this thing we call jazz later. And I came to improvise music from the standpoint of jazz I was improvising, but within these other genres of music.

The planet belongs to all being all beings are responsible. We all have to do whatever we can do no matter how small it is nothing is too small.

If you say you have an empty mind and you don't have an empty mind, you only know later that you have an empty mind. Because if you say you have empty mind, you don't have empty mind, because you're already thinking about it.

The world is going to change, whether we like it or not. We can participate in that change or we can be the victims of that change. In a way. Either we go in our stupidity ignorance, and arrogance, bring more destruction in a way, or we're forced to change.

The place that I found where European musicians and American musicians come together is that odd middle world which is called uncertainty.

If you're truly playing improvised music, I don't care who you are or where you come from, you don't know what's going to happen. I feel essentially we really don't know anything anyway, most of the times we're just guessing.

When I play with people, one of the first rules is to listen. Just by the near fact that you listen and you're open to listening, or you're listening and you're open to what this other person is doing. Also you going to be open to what you're doing and you're not going to have it like 'planned out'.

Musicians are affected by the audience just as much as audiences are affected by the musicians. The only problem is that often times musicians won't allow themselves to admit to that fact.

Femininity doesn't always relate to being a woman and masculinity doesn't always relate to being a man it's a quality of being-ness. Women have to portray the quality of masculinity society wants it to be like a man not necessarily male, but like a man. If that makes sense...In nature itself, there's yin and yang, there's masculine and feminine.