When I worked with my uncle, I loved the fact that jazz music demanded that you use your own unique approach.
Your voice is not your instrument. Your voice is the character that you build, your innermost feelings, the things that you want to say, and your instrument is the vehicle that you use to carry the message.
Art and culture and all of these things - they really matter. They shape your individuality.
I love to create something new every night onstage; that makes a big difference.
I always have a little bit of Brazil and New Orleans in my band.
My musical selections are a reflection of how I grew up. Because, back then, you could see Miles Davis and Ravi Shankar on the same stage. And nobody thought anything of it, other than the fact that it was great music.
I've always respected and taken care of my instrument.
Jazz musicians have always taken the standards of their time and performed them with a jazz sensibility.
It's funny: I look at songs, and I guess they each tell a story, and the different songs talk about different things. But they're unified by the rhythm underneath and the way that we decided to arrange and play them.
I did a project called 'Sing The Truth,' which was a lot of fun. It started out being a celebration of the music of Nina Simone, and it was me and Lizz Wright and Angelique Kidjo.
I grew up listening to all kinds of music. When I came up, you would hear people like Marvin Gaye talking about Sarah Vaughan. You would go to a show and see Ella Fitzgerald performing the music of the Beatles.
My musicians know all of my music, and so that makes for something different.
I come from a family of musicians.
I had aunts who played piano and sang and also were entertainers, so music was very much a part of my life.
When I found out how music made me feel and how my singing made other people feel, that's when I decided this is what I wanted to do.
I think that when I started singing, I didn't know what I wanted to do; I only knew what I didn't want to do.
My mother would say, 'Stay ready so you don't have to get ready.' I spent a lot of my early years preparing for beautiful moments that have unfolded in my life so far.
The biggest thing is, when I was coming up, the thing that made you wonderful was your uniqueness. People celebrated that.
When I was in junior high school, I knew I really wanted to sing.
Nina Simone is a musical genius and a rich and precious treasure who paid a heavy price for her artistic freedom.
