What does activism mean to you?

Activism is an essential term. It means that you see and understand what is needed to help humanize our society and you take an action to produce that thing that is needed.

So can an artist be an activist?

An artist must be an activist. Art is the great civilizer of our society—to me, it’s the main difference between us and animals. When we, with these big old brains, act like animals, there’s mass destruction. It’s the easiest thing for us to act animal. It’s a big struggle to become human. Harder still is to become godlike, and that’s really where we want to go.

But one of the things that’s so powerful and magical about music is that it calls on the animal parts of a listener.

Yeah, music is a very powerful tool. It can definitely communicate to the physical animal in the person, but if you leave it there, you’re creating a society of animals. Jazz calls on the whole person. To be human means we can be aware of the puzzle. We have the ability to think—why not use it? Birds have wings, they’re not gonna walk around all the time. We don’t have wings, but we have minds that can fly. In societies where art is suppressed, life is brutal. Art makes people think. It makes them understand a little more about life. It makes them more objective.

I can see that in my art form with explicit story-telling. How does an abstract language do that?

Music is a way to express emotion and feeling that supercedes language. It’s bigger and more direct than language. No matter where you’re from, a musician can communicate to another person. So music gives us all a common language. Then we find out that we’re tremendously alike, which means we’re less apt to go to war with each other, we’re less apt to steal and rob and hurt each other, because we realize we’re hurting somebody who’s just like us.