Jazz is cultural music in New Orleans. It's part of the fabric of everyday life, and everybody knows the music. It's always going to be a part of it.

Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. . . . the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things -- all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

The big tall buildings, the jazz, the traffic, all of it is communicated through the music. It's incredible. You feel like you are there.

My music is jazz.

If it has more than three chords, it's jazz.

We have different genres that are complementary to jazz and close to the idiom. This is the 37th outdoor music festival I've organized and I think it's going to be spectacular.