We understand what the difference is between what we understand and what the community understands about what we're doing because they have supported us long enough for me to stay out here, while other people who are doing other things have not. A lot of people have trouble pinning down what it is we do and how. But we don't have any trouble with that. As long as that's their problem, it's their problem.
I don't think people in power have the potential to do anything like that to me. I feel as though as long as our music is available, folks are going to hear it.
I try not to take people who haven't really thought out what they're doing too seriously. I try not to let them get in the way of what I feel I need to do.
Angel dust won't go away. Somefolks who were smoking it were going away.
I think a whole lot of stuff gets by people - I could name half a dozen groups that do songs that are openly supportive of experimentation with drugs, nobody ever said anything to them.
I find it not just strange but almost ridiculous that people could take a song like the one I was doing and interpret it is corroding anything. Folks have the feeling that oftentimes if you don't talk about something it will go away.
When we were doing the "Angel Dust" thing we got information from the National Institute of Drug Abuse because we knew that if we went out and said something about angel dust people were going to ask questions about it and we wanted to be sure we had all the information to deal with it when those questions came up. So it's all a question of being as prepared as possible out front, so that if you are going to deal with information it'll be correct. A lot of people won't check it out but some people will.
A lot of folks are so busy trying to get their groceries together that they don't have time to do research. I have time. Maybe that's the main difference.
You can have a poem like "B-Movie" and sum up thirty conversations that people have had on the subject, but I wrote it down, and other people didn't.
I think that the more people who speak out, and say things and take stands on positions that will better our community, the better off each and every other individual artist or otherwise, will be.
You see Martin Luther King is dead and Huey Newton is not. And Malcolm X is dead and Bobby Seale is not. And Vernon Jordan was shot. The thing that revolutionaries, or even people who want to claim they're revolutionaries, often forget is that it doesn't make no difference what kind of wardrobe you wear, and if you speak up about Black people doing better you just risked your life.
Oftentimes, the way it seems to be is that our artists in particular point themselves out as spokesmen for a certain constituency in a community, and thereby place themselves in that vulnerable position.
The truth is that in this country you here you're more likely to be harassed, hurt, or killed if you're a minister speaking about progress for Black people than if you are a sure enough revolutionary.
Paul Robeson once said that the artist has the responsibility to either help liberate the community or further oppress it. And I think that when Eldridge Cleaver wrote it down it was interpreted as his, but there's a history of people saying things of that nature and meaning it. And what I do is in that tradition, in that mode.
I don't suspect that in many instances the artists who are dedicated in that fashion to the progress of that community are as well protected by the community as might be necessary.
I would say if you are familiar with our history and the history of our art and literature that you see a clear cut pattern of people wanting to contribute, not only artistically, but in some practical purpose, for the benefits of the community.
I don't see any independent position that I'm in; it's rather inter-dependent.
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