Jazz is a white term to define black people. My music is black classical music.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music.
One thing that sticks in my mind is that jazz means freedom and openness. It's a music that, although it developed out of the African American experience, speaks more about the human experience than the experience of a particular people.
Jazz is rhythm and meaning.
What 'jazz' means to me is the worst kind of working conditions, the worst in cultural prejudice. The term 'jazz' has come to mean the abuse and exploitation of black musicians.
If I am playing any music at all it is jazz music.
When somebody uses a word as a genre distinction, all it really does is trigger certain experiences, or music, that somebody's been exposed to. But that's an individual thing; there's no sort of universal understanding of what jazz is.
Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.
Jazz to me is a living music. It's a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.
Jazz music by its very nature is just a conglomerate of a lot of different kinds of music.
My music is jazz.