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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.

I really love jazz, but I will never be a jazz musician as much as I dream. But, I think that the jazz music I love is there in my music.

Well, jazz is to me, a complete lifestyle. It's bigger than a word. It's a much bigger force than just something that you can say. It's something that you have to feel. It's something that you have to live.

Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.

Jazz is a constant theme in my life. My father is a jazz pianist, and from an early age I have been surrounded by it.

It's something that - jazz is one of the few things that you can go and listen to, I don't care where you're from, what you are, what background you come from - there's something there for you.

Jazz is like wine. When it is new, it is only for the experts, but when it gets older, everybody wants it.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

I just don't know anything about jazz, really. I've never really listened to it, but I'd definitely like to discover more about it.

Jazz, of course, is our heritage. Jazz is a culture, it's not a fad. It's up to us to see to it that it stays alive.