Politics is politics; art is art. If you play a political role, you have to stop being an artist.
When the slaves left Africa, they left us this music. They left us blues.
I respect music, I do. I love it.
When I'm in Senegal, I can't just sit in isolation making music. People need my help. And the Senegalese people helped create my music. It comes from the country itself.
Music in Africa often contains messages. Music in Senegal, and Africa, is never music for music's sake or solely for entertainment. It's always a vehicle for social connections, discussions and ideas.
Senegal needs to free itself, to rediscover its democracy.
I have studied at the school of the world.
Music is a language.
World music is about taking things from different places and bringing them together - which is great.
I think people should know more of Africa in terms of its joie de vivre, its feeling for life. In spite of the images that one knows about Africa - the economic poverty, the corruption - there's a joy to living and a happiness in community, living together, in community life, which may be missing here in America.
In the West, you have always associated the Islamic faith 100 percent with Arab culture. This in itself is a fundamentalist attitude and it is mistaken.
My music is like a spinning ball. It can turn in one direction, and then it comes back to origins.
Islam has been badly used by a certain ideology.
Travel teaches as much as books.
Africa is the future.
I look at my people, and I look at those who control them - the political elite. And the sad thing is that the elites are just not interested in the welfare of the people.
I'm a modern Muslim. I pray, and if I have a question, I ask someone who is more educated in the religion than me.
I love meeting interesting people and doing things with them.
If you come from Africa with your economic poverty and your cultural riches, and you meet someone like Peter Gabriel or a person from a big record company, and they tell you that what you are doing is marvelous, that makes you feel powerful.
I have to protect my family and have a life with them that is completely private.
