But I think the music is also about alchemy, about creating something of value. Maurice White says he channeled his music form God, and I believe him, but don't forget that the album is a movie soundtrack and that I wrote the story and script.

"It was a good story," says Maurice, kindly, "but our acting was a little amateurish."

Maurice laughs at that. He is smart and funny in a sweet and easy way. "It was an opportunity to make a statement to the world," he says, "from the same thoughts I'd had since I was a kid listening to Coltrane and Miles, listening to the blues. You need to get in touch with your consciousness, you need to develop a better sense of self, move away from the mass to the individual, reclaim brotherhood, and hope of peace."

Here's the movie story. In 1975, a jazzy, bluesy, funky band, enthusiastic, young, was on the edge of making it, bursting out of the community onto a world stage. The Group, played by Earth, Wind & Fire, is in the studio, cutting what could be their breakthrough hit with the golden-eared producer who discovered them. Suddenly the crooks who run the record company cancel the session. They order the producer to put The Group on a back burner and concentrate on making a bland, derivative family trio Number One with a bullet. When the producer complains, the wise guys tell him, "That's the way of the world."

The young producer, played by Harvey Keitel before he broke through, is helpless at first, but slowly mixes his own plan. Fight fire with Earth, Wind & Fire. When he finally dumps the family trio and goes off to take The Group high and higher to the world they belong, he tells the beaten crooks, "That's the way of the world."

The group watched a rough cut of the movie before they began composing the music. Maurice is spooky and coy about the process; the music is a gift to the world which, he says, was his privilege to deliver.

The lyrics came last, inspired by the music. Words are for the head, music for the heart, Maurice says. Almost twenty-five years later, I love Maurice's words as much as his music. "You're a shining star / No matter who you are / Shining bright to see what you can truly be" and "A child is born with a heart of gold / The way of the world makes his heart grow cold," goes to my heart as surely as that insistent yet mellow sound.

The movie bombed but "Shining Star" topped the charts. "That's the way of the world" became the group's anthem and "Reasons" is a classic. EW&F rode the album out of the community and onto the world stage. That's life following my script. Of course, the music they wrote for the movie was the music they had been writing and performing for years.

"The music is out there, I can tell from all the requests I get to sample it." says Maurice, who has left the road to produce and find new talent. "I have to listen before I give permission. There's a lot of bad music out there, profane, disrespectful. Our music is sacred, from my God, not a guy in a robe, but a cosmic force in nature and music."

"We've come together on this special day / To sing our message loud and clear."

Maurice wasn't surprised that I happened to find the gold record I received "in grateful recognition" for my "contribution" just before the unexpected call came to write these notes. Supernatural sound travels.