Fela Kuti Quotes

When I do uptempo songs, I like to bring in the funk and world music and different elements.

Stuff like Buena Vista Social Club and Fela Kuti were quite a main thing to my childhood. As soon as I reached an age where I realized that Fela was singing in English, when I got past his accent, I loved the rawness of it, and the funk and the rhythm and the melody.

If there was no black man there would be no Rock'n'Roll. The beat, the rhythms of Africa are what created Rock'n'Roll and Jazz.

Since the age of 12, all my musical thinking has been influenced by Afro-American music.

Miles Davis was doing something inherently African, something that has to do with all forms of American music, not just jazz.

The whole history of music has turned out to be something perfect. It's all come around. The music we did with Funkadelic and Parliament was the DNA for hip-hop.

Souljazz doesn't reinvent soul, jazz or the fusion thereof, but it plays all of the above with the passion that drove its forefathers.

I want to reach back to when R&B meant something, to when it made impressions on people.

Fela Kuti blew my mind. His playing is very unorthodox, but I learned how to appreciate that.

I like to listen to African music; I like to listen to Brazilian music that's not just Choro. I love to listen to Radiohead, I like to listen to James Brown - any music.

I want to remind people that black music is amazing. And there are all forms of it that we've forgotten, you know? Rock music is black music! Don't forget that's what it is.

As far as favorite tunes, 'You Know You Know' is one, and why it is important is difficult to say. The rhythmic cycle is very interesting and challenging to play, since it can be considered three bars of 4/4 or four bars of 3/4. 'The Dance of Maya' is another, and I have to mention 'Sanctuary.'

Making music you can dance to is very important to me.

I like African music but also R&B, rap, alternative rock, and classic.

I really like R&B more than rap.

Flow Tribe is a great bunch of New Orleans guys who have that funkiness to them.

You can never criticize a monumental musician like Jon Lord or Richie Blackmore, or the part they played in the group, but life goes on.

I grew up on R&B and soul, so that backbone is always there.

My mum would play Stevie Wonder around the house, and I remember just loving the songs and feeling so blown away by how much was going on.

I've been friends with Jaco Pastorius's son since 1996 - Johnny Pastorius, the eldest son. And I remember when I first met him, I said, 'Some day, you've gotta make a film about your father,' because his influence is so broad.

The whole British music scene of the mid-sixties had a pretty profound effect on me.

I wanted to keep pushing the musical ideas I had about jazz, music from Africa and the Caribbean.

I'm a street player, and all of my influences come from bands that I was listening to at the time when I was growing up. I was very impressed with guys like Mitch Mitchell. I liked rock and roll drummers, and I loved rhythm and blues guys like Clyde Stubblefield with James Brown. Man, that band blew me away all of the time.

I'm influenced a lot by Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, even Paul Weller - Billie Holiday as well: People who wrote and sang songs that were reflective of their times. I quite like that. I quite admire that.

Outside of Peruvian rap-rock, few genre tags raise eyebrows quite like the words 'Nigerian disco.'