Neville talks politics, music, and N.O. recovery efforts

After his recent performance at Austin Community College's Rio Grande Campus to a patio filled with dozens of students, Cyril Neville talked about his performance, his music, the recovery going on in his hometown of New Orleans and what he hopes people - especially young people - take away from his music.

Neville said that his music brings together the many cultural influences of the musicians he plays with, forming the group's unique collective sound.

Concerning Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts in New Orleans, Neville said his neighborhood of Chantilly "got inundated. We had seven feet of water in the house. My brother, 'L', lived in … East New Orleans and he had water up to the roof. All over the city there are individual families that are coming back - those that can - but there are a lot of other people that are still scattered to the four winds."

He was happy to see that young people were registering to vote in record numbers and to see the energy they are exhibiting. He expressed the view that if more people had been better informed and aware of the global political environment, we would be less likely to find ourselves involved in the current conflicts we are now caught up in.

"That's why I was glad to be able to play on a college campus," Neville said. "Some of the subject matter in our songs is political, and being able to look out and see them getting it was really refreshing. I think that is the key, to educate yourself. There are not enough Americans that know what the Constitution stands for and how it is threatened by the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, and the Supreme Court itself."

Neville said he was happy to be playing in Austin, noting that so many of the bands here in Austin are multi-ethnic, blending cultural styles as diverse as Blues, Latin, Arabian and Persian. He felt that this cultural "gumbo" was crucial in that each element provides something substantial to the sum of the whole, and without any one of the ingredients the gumbo just isn't the same.

"Everyone makes like it's a melting pot and it ain't, and it shouldn't be really. It should be more like a gumbo where every little element can stand on its own, but in a sense, it blends in and makes the gumbo what it is. It's wonderful that since being in Austin the majority of the bands I play in are multi-ethnic. I'm not just talking white and black. I'm talking white, black, Mexican, we got a couple Iranians - just people - because we are that before anything else."