I never thought that the music called "jazz" was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic.

It's like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of s-- is that, but white people's s--?

The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them...I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them.

I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens.

White folks always think that you have to have a label on everything - you know what I mean?

It takes you years to learn how to play like yourself.

We don't play to be seen. I'm addicted to music, not audiences.