Fascism is fascism. Terrorism is terrorism. Oppression is oppression.

I'm called a folk singer, and I'm not too sure about that. I went about my life approaching music not from the point of view of a singer, but from the point of view of an actor. That's how I first started to sing.

I am who I am despite what America has put before me. I am who I am despite the obstacles that we have all faced based upon race and based upon social and spiritual humiliation.

Pop culture has none of the vibrancy that you find in the folk culture, where people speak directly to their own experience in the human condition.

When I went to Japan I sang in Japanese; when I went to Greece I sang in Greek. When I went to Spain, I sang in Spanish. I couldn't speak it very well, but I sang, I was beautiful in singing it. These things just constantly attracted people to the uniqueness of who I was and the way in which I performed.

I don't know what America has really learned. We are too quick to do what's expedient on behalf of our culture of greed and hedonism. We're quite prepared to go to conditions of tyranny in order to sustain that culture, and we do it in the name of democracy, when nothing could be more undemocratic. We do it in the name of saving the values of our society, when the way we behave corrupts those values. We do it in the name of God in whom we believe, when in fact we have corrupted our own vision of the Christian journey.

Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s anchor. We are the compass for humanity’s conscience.