I Almost Never Watch Tv,

Jazz Is Not The Kind Of Music You Are Going To Learn To Play In Three Or Four Years Or That You Can Just Get Because You Have Some Talent For Music.

But You Listen To Coltrane And That's Something Human, Something That's About Elevation. It's Like Making Love To A Woman. It's About Something Of Value, It's Not Just Loud. It Doesn't Have That Violent Connotation To It. I Wanted To Be A Jazz Musician So Bad, But I Really Couldn't. There Was No Way I Could Figure Out To Learn How To Play.

Because The Blues Is The Basis Of Most American Music In The 20th Century. It's A 12-bar Form That's Played By Jazz, Bluegrass And Country Musicians. It Has A Rhythmic Vocabulary That's Been Used By Rock N' Roll. It's Related To Spirituals, And Even The American Fiddle Tradition.

When You Study Our Greatest Artists, You Will Find That They Give Us A Key To Understand How To Deal With Each Other, And That Our Bloodlines Are Intertwined. It's Not Hyphenated America. That There Is An America, And It Is Expressed In Those Arts. It Gives Us A Key To Figure Out How To Negotiate With Each Other, And It Tells Us Actually Who We Are.

I Dress Up A Certain Way Because I Respect The Music.