War’s Lonnie Jordan – HuffPost 5.5.14

Mike Ragogna: Lonnie, what’s your advice for new artists?

Lonnie Jordan: I would say not only enjoying the moment, but as far as being an artist, they should definitely become multi-talented in the field of art. Listen to a lot of music, go see a bunch of different types of art, anything that’s an art form, spread your mind out to it all, because it’s all different forms of art. When I say different types of music I mean rap, classical, jazz, reggae… Young kids have Google, go back and find out about ska, calypso and how it became reggae and all that, all of the African music, country, classical music as well, jazz, where it all came from. Understand it. That’s a challenge right there. That should be their school. That’s a challenge right there. That should be their school. Then they’ll understand art.

MR: Is that how you came into it?

LJ: Well the thing is when I first came in we didn’t have Google, all we had was dictionaries. I didn’t learn nothing from that, I learned from traveling and meeting other people because I’ve always been open to meeting and talking to other people of different nationalities and other planets. I’ve been open to everything, all genres of music. You just play one note, as far as I’m concerned and one note emphasizes all countries. That’s all you need, one note.