I want to be a jazzman until the day I die. To help keep that motion, momentum and movement going, for myself, for my students, for the people who hear me. Oh sure, some days you look around at this country and look at the evidence and think, Oh Lord, don't look good. But you keep moving. You gotta keep moving.

I have a whole lot of fun in trying to serve others and just keeping it funky, trying to keep it real, trying to ensure that we are able to be ourselves and get beyond these deodorized discourses and deodorized spaces that put on masks.

I still have a righteous indignation at injustice, no matter what form it takes. It could be homophobia, it could be white supremacy, male supremacy, imperial arrogance, class subordination or whatever.

It takes unbelievable spiritual courage, moral fortitude, to engage in militant nonviolence.

There ought to be a robust, uninhibited conversation in black America with different black ideological perspectives.

The wonderful thing about the black church for me is that it forces you to come to terms with the centrality of love in the world.

For me, music is in no way ornamental or decorative, it's constitutive of who I am.