We don't have the leadership or the understanding of the value of this, and when your political systems and your economic systems start to fail, it's only a cultural understanding that allows you to reconstruct them and to get back to who you are. For some reason, it hasn't dawned on us yet.

We looked up to our father. He still is much greater than us.

Let the critics criticize and let the doers do.

I think that when the education system started to be dismantled during the first Great Depression in the 1930s, we didn't recover from that.

One thing about excellence, it&Mac226;s an exclusive club. And it&Mac226;s only for those who really want to pay dues to the s--. My daddy told me when I was a boy: The only way you can be different from other people is to do some s-- they don't want to do.

Love is the spiritual essence of what we do. Technique is the manifestation of the preparation and investment as a result of the love.

We all teach from that same frame of reference. We're like neighborhood - the people who have had the opportunity through this music to gain a platform and spread the message of this music, which is basically love in a form of communication that's honest and truthful.