When me and my brother would go to see our daddy playing, there'd be 30 people in the audience. I was only 14 or 15, but I realised something was wrong.

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

When did we begin to lose faith in our ability to effect change?

We created the spirituals. We created so much great music, jazz chief amongst our innovations, teaching us how to prize ourselves and how to speak to one another, that our kids don't know that achievement, there's no way in the world that could be good for us.

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

Swing is extreme coordination. It's a maintaining balance, equilibrium. It's about executing very difficult rhythms with a panache and a feeling in the context of very strict time. So, everything about the swing is about some guideline and some grid and the elegant way that you negotiate your way through that grid.

My daddy expected that my brothers and I and our generation would make the world a better place. He had lived in an America of continual social progress.