It's a really unfair world because life is where I am all day long we listen to American music. So I don't see why the radios in the U.S. cannot even put aside one hour a day just to play music that is not American.

I became a set designer for opera. I'm a great opera buff I love classical music and I needed a time-out.

And why is our music called world music? I think people are being polite. What they want to say is that it's third world music. Like they use to call us under developed countries now it has changed to developing countries it's much more polite.

I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.

The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting any more than it has any reason for ending.

Ah reality TV: where opportunists delight in exposing opportunism! It's kind of like the indie music scene.

Pop stardom is not very compelling. I'm much more interested in a relationship between performer and audience that is of equals. I came up through folk music and there's no pomp and circumstance to the performance. There's no like 'I'll be the rock star you be the adulating fan.'

I see a lot of connections between folk and punk music just because they're both subcorporate music - I mean traditionally.

I seriously hate pop music and all things super-commercial.

I don't read music. I don't write it. So I wander around on the guitar until something starts to present itself.

Hunting fishing drawing and music occupied my every moment. Cares I knew not and cared naught about them.

I listen to music that is of our time and I just get angry.

I don't listen to a lot of new stuff. I just like the old stuff. It's all quite dramatic and atmospheric. You'd have an entire story in song. I never listen to like white music - I couldn't sing you a Zeppelin or Floyd song.

But for the children of the poorest people we're stripping the curriculum removing the arts and music and drilling the children into useful labor. We're not valuing a child for the time in which she actually is a child.

Most recently we've been working in concert situations rather than clubs. because there aren't too many rooms there like Ronnie Scott's that are pure music rooms where people come specifically to listen to music.

If I had to play only for people who liked the music because they heard it on the radio it wouldn't make me happy. That's why I'm working so hard to have yes a profile as an artist but also a profile as a DJ.

To me John Lennon and Elvis Presley were punks because they made music that evoked those emotions in people.

Boy bands should be exploded from a great height. They're just pretty people singing music written by others.

My life so common it disappears and sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears.

Bluegrass has brought more people together and made more friends than any music in the world. You meet people at festivals and renew acquaintances year after year.

That's why this generation is the least racist generation ever. You see it all the time. Go to any club. People are intermingling hanging out having fun enjoying the same music. Hip-hop is not just in the Bronx anymore. It's worldwide. Everywhere you go people are listening to hip-hop and partying together. Hip-hop has done that.

I think the pop chart today is entirely market-driven. And it has nothing to do with public taste. And it has nothing to do with moving music forward. It's simply a market chart.

Half the time I feel like I'm appealing to the downer freaks out there. We start to play one downer record after another until I begin to get down myself. Give me something from 1960 or something let me get up again. The music of today is for downer freaks and I'm an upper.

I don't need anybody to market or promote me. If people don't want to hear this music then it's not for them. You cannot please everybody.