King never confined himself to being solely the leader of black America — even though the white press attempted to do so. - Cornel West

America is a grand example of the Biblical challenge: what does it profit an empire to gain the whole world and lose its soul?

The political triumph of Donald Trump is a symbol and symptom—not cause or origin—of our imperial meltdown. Trump is neither alien nor extraneous to American culture and history. In fact, he is as American as apple pie. Yet he is a sign of our spiritual bankruptcy—all spectacle and no substance, all narcissism and no empathy, all appetite and greed and no wisdom and maturity. Yet his triumph flows from the implosion of a Republican Party establishment beholden to big money, big military, and big scapegoating of vulnerable peoples of color, LGBTQ peoples, immigrants, Muslims, and women; from a Democratic Party establishment beholden to big money, big military, and the clever deployment of peoples of color, LGBTQ peoples, immigrants, Muslims, and women to hide and conceal the lies and crimes of neoliberal policies here and abroad; and from a corporate media establishment that aided and abetted Trump owing to high profits and revenues. (2017 introduction)

Those notions of freedom, courage and joy would probably be the three fundamental motifs in my work, and I think that they are probably best enacted in the best of the black musical tradition.