The thing with music is that it reaches us emotionally in a way that words alone cannot. Music is a uniting force that people from all walks of life can have in common; some have even called it the strongest form of magic. It is for these reasons and many more that finding quality music events both great and small should be an occasion of joy. Because not only do you get to bask in beautiful sounds, but you also get to meet some beautiful people who share the love of music with you.

Music bypasses the intellect, it makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you want to dance, makes you want to have sex.

It’s that weird magic of if you sing a song you’re connecting to emotionally, it's going to trick me into feeling my emotions. I'm not feeling your [pain], I don't know what happened to you, but you have just tricked me into feeling my own pain and my own emotions and that is an amazing thing. That's this miraculous thing about music. Film can do it too, art can do it, but music does it great. That’s where making an album like this ['Higher Truth'] is exciting and special. The downside is you pretty much have to do it on every song. You don’t get a free pass unless you write a joke song, which I'm not good at. If I wrote like the [Beatles’] ballad ‘Rocky Raccoon’ or something I could get away from it for a second. A song about a raccoon that gets in a gun fight.

I think, fundamentally music is something inherently people love and need and relate to, and a lot of what's out right now feels like McDonalds. It's quick-fix. You kind of have a stomachache afterwards. It's not wholly satisfying. And it's fake. I would hope that the music that inspired me, that got me going, that talked to me, felt like it was coming from some place that had some true emotion and true integrity behind it. I think that can reemerge.

Music is the shorthand of emotion

I haven't heard honesty in music for so long and this is how I feel, and this is what I think. You don't even have to say words … I was just being as raw as possible. I wanted to make music that you felt in your gut.

Music’s for grooving man, and music’s not for puttin’ yourself through bad changes, y’know? I mean, you don’t have to go take anybody’s shit, man, just to like music, y’know what I mean? You don’t. So... so if you’re getting’ more shit than you deserve, you know what to do about it man. Y’know, it’s just music. Music’s... music's s’posed to be different than that.

The magic of music is so strong, getting stronger, it should break any shackle of another art.

But music, don't you know, is a dream from which the veils have been lifted. It's not even the expression of a feeling, it's the feeling itself

Music is a strange thing. I would almost say it is a miracle.

The music was more than music- at least what we are used to hearing. The music was feeling itself. The sound connected instantly with something deep and joyous. Those powerful moments of true knowledge that we have to paper over with daily life. The music tapped the back of our terrors, too. Things we'd lived through and didn't want to ever repeat. Shredded imaginings, unadmitted longings, fear and also surprisingly pleasures. No, we can't live at that pitch. But every so often something shatters like ice and we are in the river of our existence. We are aware. And this realization was in the music, somehow, or in the way Shamengwa played it.

Music is a funny thing when you really come to think about it.

Every time a new record started, people exhaled with pleasure, or their bodies moved automatically. I really started getting high off of the euphoric exclamations. Every record I put on was like a baptism.

Music is like this portal into another world – the world of truth.