I came late to the genre of folk music.

We have power not just with our voices, but we have economic power in what we do for a living, too.

My parents met in Kenya. My father is African, is Kenyan. The Kenyan side of my family was involved in the anticolonial movement.

Things like rebellion and resistance to authority are absolutely as much a part of the human experience as love and cars are, and it's a part that doesn't get covered very much in pop music.

I didn't choose to be a guitar player. That was something that felt like it was chosen for me. And with that blessing and curse, I, throughout my entire career, it's been my job to weave my convictions into my vocation. And whether I'm standing in the streets of Chicago or the Occupy Wall Street or in Madison, Wisconsin, my job is to steel the backbone of people on the frontlines of social justice struggles, and to put wind in sails of those struggles. And people who are fighting on a, on a daily basis, at a grass roots level, for the things that I believe in.

What is poverty, if not violence. Like, the number of people who die every year from starvation and from hunger and poverty is in the tens of millions.

Music, I think, is best when it honestly explores personal demons, and it stirs around in the silt of the psyche to find out what's really there.