My work has been marginalized as far as the jazz-business complex is concerned, or the contemporary-music complex.

The word music is a convenient way to talk about what I'm interested in, but actually, in some ways, it's a limitation.

There is more to creative mastership than the surface of satisfaction and political certainty. The music of Joe Fonda is part of a living tradition of belief and dedication. Future historians will be surprised at the breadth of Mr. Fonda's offerings. This is a real virtuoso and composer of the highest order.

I'm a post-Abner Jay kind of guy mixed with Roger Corman and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.

...I have great hopes for the possibility of a dynamic universalism that respects all our people.

I am viewed as the Negro who has gone outside of the categories assigned to me.

Growing up in the '50s and being in the '60s, in that revolutionary time space, I thought freedom was what I was looking for. Slowly but surely, it became clear that the last thing I was interested in was freedom. Because if you're going to be free, you have to be free from something.