EBONY/JET: Do you have any special feeling about this return to the continent of Africa?

JACKSON: For me, it’s like the “dawn of civilization.” It’s the first place where society existed. It’s seen a lot of love. I guess there’s that connection because it is the root of all rhythm. Everything. It’s home.

EBONY/JET: You visited Africa in 1974. Can you compare and contrast the two visits?

JACKSON: I’m more aware of things this time: the people and how they live and their government. But for me, I’m more aware of the rhythms and the music and the people. That’s what I’m really noticing more than anything. The rhythms are incredible. You can tell especially the way the children move. Even the little babies, when they hear the drums, they start to move. The rhythm, the way it affects their soul and they start to move. The same thing that Blacks have in America…

EBONY/JET: How does it feel to be a real king?

JACKSON: I never try to think hard about it because I don’t want it to go to my head. But, it’s a great honor…

EBONY/JET: Speaking of music and rhythm, how did you put together the gospel songs on your last album?

JACKSON: I wrote “Will You be There?” at my house, “Neverland” in California…I didn’t think about it hard. That’s why it’s hard to take credit for the songs that I write, because I just always feel that it’s done from above. I feel fortunate for being that instrument through which music flows. I’m just the source through which it comes. I can’t take credit for it because it’s God’s work. He’s just using me as the messenger….

EBONY/JET: What was the concept for the Dangerous album?

JACKSON: I wanted to do an album that was like Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. So that in a thousand years from now, people would still be listening to it. Something that would live forever. I would like to see children and teenagers and parents and all races all over the world, hundreds and hundreds of years from now, still pulling out songs from that album and dissecting it. I want it to live.

EBONY/JET: I notice on this trip that you made a special effort to visit children.

JACKSON: I love children, as you can see. And babies.

EBONY/JET: And animals.

JACKSON: Well, there’s a certain sense that animals and children have that gives me a certain creative juice, a certain force that later on in adulthood is kind of lost because of the conditioning that happens in the world. A great poet said one, “When I see children, I see that God has not yet given up on man.” An Indian poet from India said that, and his name is Tagore. The innocence of children represents to me the source of infinite creativity. That is that potential of every human being. But by the time you are an adult, you’re conditioned; you’re so conditioned by the things about you – and it goes. Love. Children are loving, they don’t gossip, they don’t complain, they’re just open-hearted. They’re ready for you. They don’t judge. They don’t see things by way of color. They’re very child-like. That’s the problem with adults: they lose that child-like quality. And that’s the level of inspiration that’s so needed and is so important for creating and writing songs and for a sculptor, a poet, or a novelist. It’s that same kind of innocence, that same level of consciousness, that you create from. And kids have it. I feel it right away from animals and children and nature. Of course. And when I’m on stage. I can’t perform if I don’t have that kind of ping pong with the crowd. You know the kind of cause and effect action, reaction. Because I play off of them. They’re really feeding me and I’m just acting from their energy.

EBONY/JET: Where is all this heading?

JACKSON: I really believe that God chooses people to do certain things, the way Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci or Mozart or Muhammad Ali or Martin Luther King is chosen. And that is their mission to do that thing. And I think that I haven’t scratched the surface yet of what my real purpose is for being here. I’m committed to my art. I believe that all art has as its ultimate goal the union between the material and the spiritual, the human and the divine. And I believe that that is the very reason for the existence of art and what I do. And I feel fortunate in being that instrument through which music flows….Deep inside I feel that this world we live in is really a big, huge, monumental symphonic orchestra. I believe that in its primordial form all of creation is sound and that it’s not just random sound, that it’s music. You’ve heard the expression, music of the spheres? Well, that’s a very literal phrase. In the Gospels, we read, “And the Lord God made man from the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.” That breath of life to me is the music of life and it permeates every fiber of creation. In one of the pieces of the Dangerous album, I say: “Life songs of ages, throbbing in my blood, have danced the rhythm of the tide and flood.” This is a very literal statement, because the same new miracle intervals and biological rhythms that sound out the architecture of my DNA also governs the movement of the stars. The same music governs the rhythm of the seasons, the pulse of our heartbeats, the migration of birds, the ebb and flow of ocean tides, the cycles of growth, evolution and dissolution. It’s music, it’s rhythm. And my goal in life is to give to the world what I was lucky to receive: the ecstasy of divine union through my music and my dance. It’s like, my purpose, it’s what I’m here for.

EBONY/JET: What about politics?

JACKSON: I never get into politics. But I think music soothes the savage beast. If you put cells under a microscope and you put music on, you’ll see them move and start to dance. It affects the soul….I hear music in everything. [Pauses] You know, that’s the most I’ve said in eight years….You know I don’t give interviews. That because I know you, and I trust you. You’re the only person I trust to give interviews to.

Africa 1992