I think that when the education system started to be dismantled during the first Great Depression in the 1930s, we didn't recover from that.

There are forces all around you who wish to exploit division, rob you of your freedom, and tell you what to think. But young folks can rekindle the weary spirit of a slumbering nation.

Jazz is democracy in music.

For Black people, we're one of the only groups of people that for some reason to express love of yourself, in some ways, is misconstrued as a dislike for someone else.

The soul gives us resilience - an essential quality since we constantly have to rebound from hardship.

Everything comes out in blues music: joy , pain , struggle . Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance.

Many heroic things happened during slavery. And remember that there was a national movement away from it even at the time. The era of Reconstruction and then the subsequent dismantling of Reconstruction sent us in a tailspin. Then we had the Civil Rights movement. Now we have our first non-white president. We have a pattern of moving apart and then coming back together throughout the history of this country. Each time, we come closer.