My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.

Blues is the bedrock of everything I do. All the characters in my plays, their ideas and attitudes, the stance they adopt in the world, are all ideas and attitudes that are expressed in the blues.

I guess I would call my music 'blues punk.' There's a lot of influences.

I once wrote a short story called 'The Best Blues Singer in the World,' and it went like this: 'The streets that Balboa walked were his own private ocean, and Balboa was drowning.' End of story. That says it all. Nothing else to say. I've been rewriting that same story over and over again. All my plays are rewriting that same story.

The blues are important primarily because they contain the cultural expression and the cultural response to blacks in America and to the situation that they find themselves in. And contained in the blues is a philosophical system at work. And as part of the oral tradition, this is a way of passing along information.

We were what you would call a poor family, but we were rich in so many things. We did family things together. We always had dessert, even if it was just Jell-O. So, I never knew I was poor.