I go to play for Congo now and it's a reality check. You see how it is for some people and you don't take things for granted. A lot of the people in Congo, to get the opportunity that I have had, I don't know what they'd do.
I chose Congo in order to become close to a place that we had turned away from. It isn't present in our imaginations, in the stories we tell each other. Yet it's relevant to our lives and to our worlds, in a practical way. Congo supplies raw materials for the things that we use on a daily basis. We are intimately linked to Congo, economically. We're linked to it through human events that are occurring there, that affect all of us, and yet you don't find narratives of Congo present in our lives.
The murder of Lumumba, in which the U.S. was involved, in the Congo destroyed Africa's major hope for development. Congo is now total horror story, for years.
At 16 I was living in the Congo, and, you know, it's your teenage time. I really wanted to find a way to express myself, so I started to write songs in the Congo, and I think that's why my music is quite open, with a lot of different influences.
The Congo is really beautiful. People correct me and say, "Oh, you mean the Democratic Republic of the Congo." Well, fine. But, the land there, the landscape is extraordinary. It's big lakes and beautiful hills and trees.
Syria is bad enough, it's a pretty terrible atrocity. But there are much worse ones in the world. So for example, the worst atrocities in the past decade have been in the Congo, the Eastern Congo, where maybe 5 million people have been killed.
The Congo is so fun. The ideal body type coveted by women in the Congo is this extremely curvaceous body. They're going through a number of extreme measures to get that kind of body form, and one of them is by using bouillon cubes.
I've been talking to a lot of young people, especially here in America. I let them know that the people who they're competing with for opportunities live all over the place. They're probably not in your city, state, or country; they are hungry, and they are grinding! Some of the things that a lot of us take for granted, these people don't.
I see so many people get so wrapped up in wanting to get a bigger SUV or a bigger house. But then I think, 'My God, I could have been born a woman in the Congo.'
If you just try to make rational arguments about why people should care about Congo and how 5 million people have died, then people tend not to be receptive. But once you've created a connection of empathy, rational arguments can play a supportive role.
When I get out on the field, you see me laughing so much because it's a dream come true. A lot of people wish they could do what I do, or wish they had an opportunity to do what I do. But not everybody's granted opportunity. I was, so I'm taking full advantage of it.
Neo-Hoodoo is the 8 basic dances of 19th century New Orleans' Place Congo- the Calinda the Bamboula the Chacta the Babouille the Conjaille the Juba the Congo and the VooDoo- modernized into the Philly Dog, the Hully Gully, the Funky Chicken, the Popcorn, the Boogaloo and the dance of great American choreographer Buddy Bradley.
I don't ever take anything for granted. I know... people would kill for the opportunity to play on festival stages and whatnot.
The reality is that the founding fathers were land speculators. The fact was that you couldn't vote in this country if you did not own land, and that was basically you had to be a white man who owned land. Now how did they get that land? They basically had to steal it from someone, and that would be probably the Indians. And so most of the initial founding fathers were, while they may have had some really nice ideas about democracy, they had a lot of issues with people of color. They had a lot of issues with people who held things that they coveted.
I've always cared about my personal style and the way people perceive me. I know a lot of times people don't get the opportunity to talk to me, so they're just going to see what I wear, see how I'm dressed, see how I present myself.
Most people don't know that Congo Square was originally a Muscogee ceremonial ground... in New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz.
If I don't have something to do, I'm not the kind of person who can sit on a beach on holiday. I've got to go and check things out and see things and look at things, and have some kind of itinerary in my mind. I think that a lot of people who are, in some ways, successful are kind of like that.