This music heals people because music is vibration, and the proper vibration heals.

Trumpet players see each other, and it's like we're getting ready to square off or get into a fight or something.

I try to find the core values that are so fundamental that they transcend ethnic identity. That doesn't mean I run from it. I embrace African-American culture and I love it and embrace it, but it is a part of a human identity. So I'm always trying to make a larger human statement.

But you listen to Coltrane and that's something human, something that's about elevation. It's like making love to a woman. It's about something of value, it's not just loud. It doesn't have that violent connotation to it. I wanted to be a jazz musician so bad, but I really couldn't. There was no way I could figure out to learn how to play.

Everything about the swing is about some guideline and some grid and the elegant way that you negotiate your way through that grid.

Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.

Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.