My biggest obsession is to show Africans and the world who the people of Africa really are.

When I left South Africa in 1960 I was 20 years old. I wanted to try to get an education, and music education was not available for me in South Africa.

I just came from South Africa, a place that had been in a perpetual uprising since 1653, so the uprising had become a way of life in our culture and we grew up with rallies and strikes and marches and boycotts.

I'm travelling more than ever. I don't have the answer as to why, but the demand seems to have grown as I've got older.

It's obvious that the rest of the world loves high African culture - African culture, period.

The Afro-American experience is the only real culture that America has. Basically, every American tries to walk, talk, dress and behave like African Americans.

I had to run away from home in order to be a musician. Because I came from a family of... my father was a health inspector; my mother was a social worker. And I was pretty smart in school. So they expected me to be some kind of academic - schoolteacher, or doctor, lawyer - and they were very disappointed when I told them I wanted to be a musician.