Christian Scott quotes:

Jazz is really 20th-century fusion music. You take West African harmony and rhythm, mix with European harmony, and boom!

New Orleans is a place where people are deliberately undereducated so that they can be a labour class - the economy there is tourism, and one of the only outlets that black males have traditionally been allowed is to play jazz music, y'know?

I live in New York, but I'm gone 310, 320 days a year. My apartment is storage.

At Mardi Gras, the different tribes will basically play war games, and so my brother is what you call a Flag Boy, which is more of less like a tribe's diplomat. He carries the game's standard and is really the line of where the game starts.

Man I mean, the great thing about playing clubs in Harlem is people have an appreciation not just for the music but for the history of the music.

The one thing that I've learned is that people don't change. Each new generation has the same stuff that the last one did. It's one of those things where jazz kind of works in five-year cycles.

We didn't have much, but I was raised to believe if you had books, you had a lot. My grandfather and my parents made me and my twin brother Kiel read at least a book a week.

I hate the natural sound of the trumpet, but I think I'm naturally set up to be a trumpet player. I know that sounds weird. But pretty much anytime I play a note, I'm uncomfortable in a general sense.

The music that I make, the younger musicians are referring to it as 'stretch' music.

I came up with a 'forecasting cell,' which is basically a mixed intention cell or chord that is a complete hybrid of a consonance and a dissonance, and what that does when you are improvising is lead you to where you are supposed to go.

Even if I have a good day, I still am aware of other people that are going through really hard, tumultuous things. I don't want to be the person who has a platform and neglects the things I see in my life and experiences.

I wouldn't argue that anyone living can play the trumpet better than Wynton Marsalis.

I don't just play the trumpet because it's something that resonates with me: I play the trumpet because I realize it's a means to help free a lot of people that ain't free.