It’s nice when music can eclipse the reality outside the door or the everyday hubbub of our lives and that’s one power we have as musicians. But it’s also important that this music comes from a lineage of resistance. Basically [jazz] is a music that survives in spite of its origins… It’s music from a marginalized community of color that dreamed something into existence against all odds and against forces that were conspiring for it not to happen. It’s part of the language and aesthetic of the music. It’s that defiance and that strength in spite of it all. That’s an animating force. It’s not something that we should try to forget.
