“If you understood everything I say, you’d be me!”

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

If you’re not nervous then you’re not paying attention.

To keep creating you have to be about change.

If you don’t know what to play, play nothing.

When the band plays fast, you play slow; when the band plays slow, you play fast.

In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn.

In music, silence is more important than sound.

If you’re going to drop behind, you have to keep it there.

My future starts when I wake up every morning.

There are no wrong notes.

When kids don’t learn about their own heritage in school, they just don’t care about school… But you won’t see it in the history books unless we get the power to write our own history and tell our story ourselves.

I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it – like, they say “rock”. Because the white singers can’t sound like James Brown, they call him “soul”. They’ve been doing that for years. That’s the prejudice crap.

Jazz musicians are so comfortable. The reason they can’t do what we do is because they’re so comfortable doin’ what they do.

First you imitate, then you innovate.

That’s the way women do. The frown. They want to give you the attitude to approach them back, by giving you a negative vibe.

Jazz is like blues with a shot of heroin!