Omar Sosa, whose octet is performing in Music Hall tonight, is one of the leading lights of the Afro-Cuban jazz movement, a brilliant and spiritual musician. Mr. Sosa spoke to The Badger Herald earlier this week, and what started as a brief interview for the purposes of publicizing this performance quickly became a near-sermon on music, spirit and peace.

In true jazz fashion, Mr. Sosa’s answers were not bound by any limitations, and they provide as good an insight into his righteous “philosophy-music” as may be possible.

The Badger Herald: What does music give to you?

Omar Sosa: The music is extremely powerful, because it comes out of the spirit. Sometimes you play for 90 minutes, and you feel the spirits talk to you every single second.

Also, you feel that the people feel. You are one of the most happy persons in this life. It’s all about spirit: giving the message and translating something to the people through the music.

Music is my life; without music, everybody dies. Everything is music. The sound of the freeway is music, air is music, talking, breathing, heartbeat, all of that is music. And the point is that a lot of people don’t relate to how powerful the music is.

BH: Define “jazz” as you see it.

OS: I have kind of mixed feelings about the word “jazz.” To me, it’s a philosophy more than a style of music, philosophy-music. “Jazz” is just a word.

If you go back to history, it means climax, the end of making love. For a lot of musicians, “jazz” is not a good word. But if jazz is a philosophy, like [Thelonius] Monk says, we arrive at one place. Because Monk says, “Jazz is inside you, no matter what you want to say.”

That’s why I consider myself a jazz musician, not because I play the style of music, but because I live the style of music. Jazz is Africa to me. The only thing that people need to do is be open and free with the spirit. In that moment, we are all jazz musicians.

Personally I don’t care about the “jazz” style. For me, one important thing in jazz is to be free. Jazz, for so many reasons, became intellectual music, but people feel, that’s all.

BH: Who or what would you call your major influences?

OS: Religion. I’m a Santero, and this is my main influence because, through it, I communicate with the spirits, and I know how big, close, important and powerful they are. They got the truth. They know the road we take, and they know the route. This is why it’s so important to me.

Other main influences are Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, Charlie Palmeiri, Eddie Palmieri, Ruben Gonzalez, Chucho Valdez, Herbie Hancock.

Also the African roots, 100 percent. If we could say a million percent, it would be. See, man, we are influenced by every single thing that happens in this life. One main influence for me right now is peace, because I been in war, the wars in Angola and Nicaragua.

They talk about “Wow! God bless America!” and they don’t know about men killing each other. A lot of innocent American people go to the war and come back crazy. Nobody talks about this, everybody’s just concerned about ego size and who is most powerful and the biggest winner.

This is something to consider, and through the music we can put all the people together. This is all we have; music only has love. Peace is the only way to survive in the world. It’s not the way to say “guilty” or “innocent,” no, no, no.

Sometimes we don’t listen to what our hearts say. The most beautiful thing is to give a kiss to your child, and the people in the Middle East and Africa wanna do the same thing, man, but the only thing they hear is bombs.

Why, brother? We’re human beings either way, it doesn’t matter where you’re born, if you’re born in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Mississippi or Minnesota or Africa. We need to pray to God to give peace to the whole world, because if you kill somebody, it’ll come back to you.

Maybe not today, not tomorrow, but it’ll come back to you. Karma, man. Who are you to kill somebody? I’m not agreeing with anybody, because I agree with peace.

If we get into the music, we can put everybody together, because the people can feel how amazing it is to be alive. See, money’s bullshit, man. Money keeps everybody fighting. They lose their mind.

With the music, the people start to feel how important life is and how we are alive at this moment. That’s all we have, and we need to give the opportunity to everybody. Peace and love, brother.

The Omar Sosa Octet performs this evening at Music Hall. Tickets are available at the Union Theatre Box Office or by calling 262-2201.