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You know, jazz is the mother of all American music. R&B and pop and rap and everything are the branches on the main tree of the life of music, American music, which is jazz.

The roots of Cuban music are in my head.

Jazz music by its very nature is just a conglomerate of a lot of different kinds of music.

Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.

Jazz was the pop music of its day, and all American popular music has stemmed from it one way or another.

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

Jazz came out of New Orleans, and that was the forerunner of everything. You mix jazz with European rhythms, and that's rock n' roll, really. You can make the argument that it all started on the streets of New Orleans with the jazz funerals.

Jazz is rhythm and meaning.

Jazz is known all over the world as an American musical art form and that's it. No America, no jazz. I've seen people try to connect it to other countries, for instance to Africa, but it doesn't have a damn thing to do with Africa.

You can't seperate modern jazz from rock or from rhythm and blues - you can't seperate it. Because that's where it all started, and that's where it all come from - that's where I learned to keep rhythm - in church.