My mother was an introvert and quite religious. And we were brought up in the church. And when she learned that I wanted to act, she simply said: ‘You cannot live here and do that.’
The Creator wants us to drum. He wants us to corrupt the world with drum, dance and chants. After all, we have already corrupted the world with power and greed….which hasn’t gotten us anywhere – now’s the time to corrupt the world with drum, dance and chants.
Be worried if no one is criticizing you. Your job in life is to ignore the 33% who will never like you and do your best to convince the 33% who don’t care either way to join the 33% who love you.
Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.
An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I’ve left the opera house.
In my opinion, being an all-rounder is good. It is not right that I should be content with qawwali and ignore other forms, since I am basically trained in classical singing. We should be masters of all forms of singing.
