“Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that goes far beyond just making music for the sake of music”

“music isn't just something that comforts or distracts us, it goes beyond that - it's an ideology. you can judge people by the kind of music they listen to.”

“...whenever there is inspiration...and enthusiasm...there is a creative empowerment that goes far beyond what a mere person is capable of.”

“Wherever one looks in the realms of creative endeavor, one finds the greatest architecture, music, art, sculpture, drama, ritual placed in the service of non-sense, the exalted realm of the ideal, the possible.”

“Sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”

“It is not simply as release or play, in other words, that popular music saves society from its routine murders; it is not just relief from the long day's work or the joy that comes from cutting loose or the affirmation of community that makes it attractive, although all of these play their parts. In the Americas, popular music is a mission and strategy to recover the deep theoretical roots that extend far into the past and constitutes nothing less an alternative history of Western civilization.”