On the matter of social change, Amiri Baraka answered that you first have to get together with others and organize around common concerns. You don't let go and you repeat and repeat day after day the same things to the powers-that-be, and eventually you'll get what you want. (Baraka has helped to establish an African-American museum in Newark, New Jersey, where he lives.) But, he emphasized, you've got to keep showing up.
About a funded study of improvisation and its social effects that was underway at Guelph University, Parker suggested the money should instead be given to improvising musicians who'd play for audiences that would then understand something about improvisation.
The panelists stayed refreshingly un-academic in their answers, but they didn't go lowbrow, either. They simply spoke sensibly from their considerable life experience as working and contributing artists.
