Don't Wish For Someone Else

Jazz Music Is The Power Of Now. There Is No Script. It's Conversation. The Emotion Is Given To You By Musicians As They Make Split-second Decisions To Fulfill What They Feel The Moment Requires.

If You Didn't Have The Amalgam Of Blacks And African-type Sensibility And European Sensibility, You Wouldn't Have Jazz. Even In The Negative And In The Positive Ways - If There Was No Slavery And The Abolition Of Slavery, There Would Be No Jazz.

The Arts Speak Across Epochs. If You Think That People Started To Build A Cathedral In 1315 And The People Worked On That Cathedral, It Wasn't Going To Be Finished Until 1585. So They Were Thinking 200 Years From Now. Maybe By The Time I Die, This Wall Might Be Put Up.

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

I Remember When I Wrote A Piece, "blood On The Fields," It Was A While Ago, It Was About Slavery And About Two Characters, And I Studied So Much Of Music, I Would Always Go Back To The Original Documents, And As Much As I Can Get Original Chants And Slave Chants And Different Type Of Beats And Rhythms And Ring Shout.