I am not scared of making mistakes.

I like to go to old versions and find out what effect beats and scales have on your body, how they can transport you.

In Western classical music the idea of holiness, purity, perfection, and total beauty is expressed through clarity of sound - a bell-like sound. Obviously, that has its own place, and it's a beautiful way of doing it. But I don't think I am the first to point out that in Africa, the more buzzing the sound is, the more it indicates the other world - the spirit world.

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

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.

Going to the Sahara Desert and meeting the Touareg band Tinariwen was a life-changing experience. All through that time, I have just carried on learning and meeting musicians, and I keep finding links between different forms.

I don't want to copy the people I admire - I'd rather find out what inspired them and try to find my own way through it.