(De una entrevista a Perfect sound forever en 1999)
"But the problem is with Western music. Most of it has no soul! It's stagnant. The movement, or lack of movement, is predictable. Certain elements of jazz and other improvisational explorations might serve as an exception here, but still, there is so much canned shit out there that the money-spending populace will continue to eat it up because it's safe. They don't know any better and they're afraid of change or anything slightly different. People should never be afraid to stop breathing! They might learn something!
But it doesn't stop there. Even soul music has no soul. I was talking to James Brown backstage at a club in Tempe, Arizona in the mid-80s. It was a short, very informal discussion, and the subject of "soul" music came up. One of the few things I remember him saying was: "it's all in the feet, the heat is in the feet." That seemed to sum it all up for him. Now don't get me wrong, I have a great respect for James Brown, but to me that just smells bad. Eastern music, whether it's from the sub-Continent, Indochina, Japan, Indonesia, Mesopotamia, etc., has that strange, mystical surround-sound that is very open to atmospheric interpretation. It can tell stories without words, evoke images without pictures, and, it's much more fragrant. The same can be said about gypsy music as well as a ton of other stuff from other, non-Western horizons.
Traveling
into various third-world regions has an indirect effect on some of
the music we play, but that's not the main purpose of going there.
There is so much more going on than music. It's always the magic and
ritual that speaks the loudest without words of course!"
