We don't have the leadership or the understanding of the value of this, and when your political systems and your economic systems start to fail, it's only a cultural understanding that allows you to reconstruct them and to get back to who you are. For some reason, it hasn't dawned on us yet.

I'll write down and catalogue all the different devices that are Americana to me, and I try to have a historic depth and breadth and also the things that we do in our time, the type of vamps and chants, things that are available to us.

And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.

This is our bandstand. If you don't want to play, get up off the instrument and leave.

The reason why the music [jazz] is important is because it's an art form-an ancient art form-that takes in the mythology of our people.

We all teach from that same frame of reference. We're like neighborhood - the people who have had the opportunity through this music to gain a platform and spread the message of this music, which is basically love in a form of communication that's honest and truthful.

Through first-class education, a generation marches down the long uncertain road of the future with confidence.