“…He [Jackie McLean] explained his essentially spontaneous approach to improvisation: ‘First you have to have complete command of the instrument and then you leave the rest to your emotions. You go where your emotions take you. When I play I listen closely to the rhythm section and play exactly how I feel and then, too, if you have a melody in the beginning or some sort of form, a statement that you can go back to in the end, you can play from that.’”

The musicians themselves know the answers to all the questions posed. If only we could lift the errors of history and realize that, in fact, no matter what ethnicity represents musicians, artists, dancers, that difference enriches the culture that whites participate in rather than takes away from it.

Thomas Jefferson wrote that “All men are created equal…” but he, himself, owned tens of slaves on four farms. The irreconcilability of this lies, I suppose, in the way he treated his slaves, which was not brutally. He treated them as human beings, gave them humble abodes and responsibility in their duties. Or so has been reported.

The point I am making is that this is true: “Spiritual transformation through music, empathy and understanding…”

But some people will never get it.