Let The Critics Criticize And Let The

Flexibility Is An Essential Part Of Jazz. It's What Gives Jazz Music The Ability To Combine With All Other Types Of Music And Not Lose Its Identity.

Jazz Music Is America's Past And Its Potential, Summed Up And Sanctified And Accessible To Anybody Who Learns To Listen To, Feel, And Understand It. The Music Can Connect Us To Our Earlier Selves And To Our Better Selves-to-come. It Can Remind Us Of Where We Fit On The Time Line Of Human Achievement, An Ultimate Value Of Art.

The People Are Not Coming Because Of Me. They Didn't Come Before Me. It's Because Of A Lack Of Education And Understanding, So It Makes Me More Motivated. It's Like My Mother Said About Having An Artistic Child - She Learned More From Him And He Gets More Attention And More Of The Love, Not Less.

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.

When I Came To New York, To Brooklyn, I Met Alvin Ailey And Stanley Crouch And August Wilson. They Were Always Putting Things In A Philosophical Context. All The Great Jazz Musicians Did, Too. There Was Always A Sub-context To What They Were Saying About Music Even Though They Would Be Very Down Home And Earthy. So I Started To Develop, In Addition To My Power And Ability To Simply Hear, A Way To Place Myself In A Time.