"I get bored very quickly."
"A lot of people in the African-American community are raised by grandmothers, and that relationship is a special bond and circle."
"I come from a family that has grown their own food from well into times of slavery, provided for themselves and people around them. So I found, through conversations about the earth and about the house with my neighbors, a lot of common ground."
"By high school, I was putting the music for the services together and teaching Sunday school to everybody's kids."
"I think of myself as an interpretative singer and a songwriter."
"Where I fit genre-wise, it's hard to tell. It's a fickle wind. But I have to believe there's always going to be a place for the songs inside of me."
"Whoever is playing with me, they participate in the arrangement; I learned from Craig Street to really pool the stories and the skill and the voices of everybody around you on the bandstand to build an arrangement in the moment."
"I see 'Grace' as an affectionate refusal of things that just aren't true. With all our power and money and influence, we still can't raise up high over people's consciousness."
"If we work on it, we can absolutely refuse any notion that suggests that after generations of contributing to this country, being a part of the bones and the marrow, that I'm supposed to be uncomfortable here."
"I never left jazz. The relationship between structure and improvisation - that constant conversation and tension - I've always wanted in every genre and song that I perform."
"Jazz has a lot to do with being very present. You know the structure, then you flow through it."
"Jazz has provided the framework for all the other stuff that I've done."
"There's a beautiful, kind of seductive trap in being autobiographical in our writing of songs: We just get stuck in our own syrup, and it's so personal that it almost can be embarrassing to the listener."
"I'm a preacher's kid, I'm big-boned, I have giant feet, and I've always been able to run fast, and so I had this sense of, 'I can't fail. I'm invincible. I'm made of green juice and concrete; nothing's gonna happen to me.'"
"I think living in a way that's close to nature makes you feel like that - makes you feel how thin the veil is between life and death."
"I'm so grateful for just the inherent mercy of life."
"I come from a lineage of ministers."
"The women and the men are teachers and preachers in my family, and a little bit of both those fell on me."
"I'm a real Otis Redding fan, and I just think he sounds so good. He sounds like he's always at the end of a long day, and he just won't give up. I just love his wearied devotion - that beautiful, beautiful, weathered sound."
"Salif Keita's one of my favorite artists."
"'Moffou' is one of my favorite records."
"Music is primal: when it's done without pretension, you can really feel the shape of someone's soul."
"Everyone I perform and tour with looks out for each other; we ensure we stay healthy."
"I studied opera for a year at Georgia State University, but I wasn't interested in that meticulous, technical approach to music. So I left school and went back to jazz."
"The whole musical institution of the church involves a lot of different styles of communication at the same time. Things like call and response. Sometimes they use the music to pray and work things out. And there's so much repetition in gospel, it's like churning butter."
