Quotes About Heritage

That's the way New Orleans is. It's driven by the music.

New Orleans is like my blood; it's not going anywhere. And then I just take different things that I've learned over the years and add them to what I'm doing with the natural New Orleans sound.

I need New Orleans. And New Orleans needs me.

New Orleans made me who I am.

The only thing we try and do is just be a part of the gumbo that New Orleans is.

At the end of the day, I'm a New Orleans musician. Whatever that means.

Music and dance is part of everything in New Orleans. So I grew up appreciating it all.

My family is from New Orleans. My grandma is French. Everybody else is from Mississippi - Creole people.

Not everyone can be an orphan.

So my father grew up in an orphanage in Boston. He was then adopted by an elderly childless couple from Maine, who gave him the name of Mitchell. He moved to Maine, and there he met my mother and was married.

I grew up so conservative. I grew up as an orthodox Jew.

I came from the most orthodox background you could ask for.

I come from an orthodox Muslim family.

I went to an Orthodox Jewish children's home that became an orphanage.

I was brought up in a very traditional way by my grandparents in an orthodox Tamil-Brahmin family.

One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.

A community, once it realises that its language is in danger, can get its act together and introduce measures which can genuinely revitalise. You've seen it happen in Australia with several Aboriginal languages. And it's happening in other countries, too.

People would call me Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan or whatever popular martial artist there was at that time. I also remember the other kids at the lunch table freaking out when I brought in Korean food.

Remember who you are and where you come from; otherwise, you don't know where you are going.

There are a great many colored people who are ashamed of the cake-walk, but I think they ought to be proud of it.

This first-generation narrative keeps happening over and over and over again, whether it was Irish or Jewish or our community, South Asians, Japanese-Americans, Mexican-Americans. We've all gone through this sort of bridge, and it will continue to happen.

Who are we to think that our generation is going to be the first generation to benefit from all the sacrifices that others have made without giving some modern-day equivalent of our own lives, fortunes, and sacred honor?

For as long as I can remember, our family has been huge Cardinals fans. My grandpa is a personal friend of Whitey Herzog's; they were neighbors for decades. Our love and support of the Cardinals definitely runs deep.

We have to let the younger generations take our music - and approach it the way they want - but just teach them where it all comes from.