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

The blues is always there. It's going to be hard out here, but it's all right. It's all right, and that's what the blues teaches you. You got to roll with the punches and find your equilibrium.

So when we spend all of our time trying to separate that which is already joined, it's a waste of time.

Commercialism that has absolutely no relationship to quality whatsoever, only quantitative assessment of a thing.

The history of jazz lets us know that this period in our history is not the only period we've come through together. If we truly understood the history of our national arts, we'd know that we have mutual aspirations, a shared history, in good times and bad.

It was Dr. King's tireless activism that fostered our modern way of relating to one another.

I always read all these books about the slaves. My mother is very educated. My father would talk to us like we were grown men. We never knew what he was talking about half the time.