You play ensemble things that you had no idea you were going to play two minutes before.

Intellect in the practice room or studio gives you the tools to use your heart on stage.

The rebuilding of New Orleans is an important point in the history of the United States.

I'm only involved really right now with the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Brass Fantasy.

We no longer want to be a melting pot, because we don't understand what is already melted.

My biggest obsession is to show Africans and the world who the people of Africa really are.

Play as well as you can all the time, and if you're truthful to your thing, you'll succeed.

It's so important to listen to music, to listen again and again. Eat, sleep and drink music.

Watching a Kirk Douglas movie, 'Young Man With A Horn,' made me want to be a trumpet player.

It was Dr. King's tireless activism that fostered our modern way of relating to one another.

It's obvious that the rest of the world loves high African culture - African culture, period.

And there are a lot of people interested in creative music, there are more and more and more.

Music is life itself. What would this world be without good music? No matter what kind it is.

When you create change with your point of view, you have to be ready for what comes with that.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel not the way others think you should feel.

When I got started in New York, if you were different from Miles & Dizzy it was very difficult.

If there is one characteristic that signals creativity in business, it might be follow-through.

Jazz is such a powerful cultural statement that it's almost as if it's intertwined with society.

The only justification for looking down on anyone is that you're going to stop and pick them up.

The musicians I respected were much older than me. I expected them to cut my head, and they did.

To be a true artist you have to play the way you feel - not the way others think you should feel.

The first time I ever played the trumpet in public, I played the Marine Hymn. I sounded terrible.

We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.

Africa has been troubled for a long time - well, the world has been troubled ever since I was born.

Jazz should be much less about stress on technical exhibitionism and much more on emotional content.

On those long notes behind the trumpet solo, if anyone lets his mind wander for a minute he is dead.

Dizzy used to tell me I'm playing too hard. He'd say to not give everything. Miles told me that too.

Because I believe that the future of the music lies in the Internet. It can be sold on the Internet.

I'm just lucky to have the type of friends and musicians and people dedicated to my music that I do.

Maybe the preoccupation with technological progress has overshadowed our concern with human progress.

When I first came to New York everybody on the scene would treat me like I could play but I couldn't.

At first it was just a misdemeanor, but then you lost the "mis-de" and you just got meaner and meaner.

The soul gives us resilience - an essential quality since we constantly have to rebound from hardship.

What I really have in my head, my imagination, my understanding of music, I never really get that out.

When I first came to New York everybody on the scene would treat me like I could play, but I couldn't.

All them weird chords which don't mean a thing...you got no melody to remember, and no beat to dance to

So when we spend all of our time trying to separate that which is already joined, it's a waste of time.

I grew up with protests, marches, demonstrations, struggle. But I come from a clan of community workers.

Everything comes out in blues music: joy , pain , struggle . Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance.

I didn't know the right names for anything at first, but I knew what knocked me out. Changes... man I dug.

I was determined to play my horn against all odds, and I had to sacrifice a whole lot of pleasure to do so.

I advise all the young kids to not overwork. You can't be out there blowing hard. You have to pace yourself.

Sounds of daily life are musical. I try to absorb the intricacies of sounds as if I were listening to music.

I quit drinking, so I can think clear. When you have chop trouble, drinking doesn't help the healing process.

I don't think any musician ever thinks about making a statement. I think everybody goes into music loving it.

When Buddy played, he played all out, all the time. It was a wonder he didn't keel over and die before he did.

I always make the joke that I go home, to one of my homes, to go and do laundry so I can go on the road again.

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

Through first-class education, a generation marches down the long uncertain road of the future with confidence.

The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel.

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