In a lot of African instruments, you find a rattle, and sound engineers have a hard time making sense of it.

I am very sensitive to music, so I can quite easily allow myself to access that space in which I am completely taken over. And you can get quite a reaction out of the crowd when you do that.

There actually had been a tradition within English music of the '60s of people looking eastwards, maybe in quite a naïve way, but nonetheless, you had musicians like George Harrison or Bryan Jones recording the musicians of Joujouka in North Africa.

I think it's quite jarring and exciting when you see someone in the thrall of being completely transported by the music they're sharing with you.

I love communicating with people, and sometimes language is not enough. I think that's what poetry is, where you can mess with language and get through to things that can't be described or communicated through regular language or scientific processes.

One of my interests is to understand what constitutes the vibe of a place and what makes one concert different from another.

I think the origins of music have probably to do with magic and transcendence as well.