That's a skill that I'm proud of: to be able to be a jazz musician and go a bit crazy sometimes and other times be able to pull it all in and lay it down like a track.

Instead of hearing, "Oh, he's good," I'd rather hear, "Wow, you changed my feelings today, you made me feel different."

Everybody's not going to like jazz, let's just be honest about it. Everybody doesn't like everything. There's a disconnect in generations and some people just aren't going to feel that music.

It came from my mother. She was a singer, and literally every day of the week she sang at a different club in a different genre of music: country, R&B clubs, jazz clubs, church on Sunday morning where she was the music director, pop hits, soft rock. I grew up listening to all this music, so it was never one thing for me.

I grew up in church. That's how most young African American musicians learn how to perform. You could be six years old and playing organ or drums in front of thousands or hundreds of people.

I think there's beauty in repetition. And that's part of my culture and African culture as well: repeated things, mantra. It's spiritual, it's meditation, it's Buddhism, it's praying, it's all these things.

It's funny, now that we have Twitter and Facebook and stuff, you can really see how you affect fans. Before all that, fans couldn't tell you exactly how they feel, unless they came up after a show, and even then you can't stand there and talk to everybody in the audience. So it's nice to see people tweet me and say, "Your music has changed my life," or "I had my baby to your music," or "I got married to your music." I've heard so many things, and it's amazing to hear people's stories and how you affect their life.