The real power of Jazz is that a group of people can come together and create improvised art and negotiate their agendas... and that negotiation is the art

New Orleans - the real New Orleans - is the soul of the country.

If you looked around, you'd be glad you couldn't see.

If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying.

Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.

I always like to play very contemporary concepts of swing right next to New Orleans music because it highlights continuum.

The musicians, Duke Ellington, his thing was not about separating himself from the rest of America. Louis Armstrong - go to the forefathers of our music - Jelly Roll Morton - they're not preaching a separatist agenda. They're not taking their music and saying, "This is for me."