I always wanted to know what the music behind some music was, or where it came from, and that gave me a point of reference for understanding the music I was listening to.

I think entertainment is a perfectly noble occupation.

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 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.

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.

I always wanted to know what the music behind some music was, or where it came from, and that gave me a point of reference for understanding the music I was listening to.

I have a lot of experience in playing all sorts of venues. And one of my interests is to understand what constitutes the vibe of a place and what makes one concert different from another. You can't fully measure or calculate these things, yet they are absolutely evident once you're on stage.