To date, [Wynton] Marsalis has received a total of nine Grammy Awards a Pulitzer Prize (the first ever awarded to a jazz musician)... and twenty-nine honorary degrees, including Columbia, Brown, Princeton and Yale the National Medal of Arts and numerous awards from other countries.

Through the dark days of legalized segregation and on into the civil rights era, jazz shone as a beacon for achieving interracial respect and understanding. It seemed as if the dream of a color-blind society was within reach in the jazz world, where musicians were judged on merit and not skin color.

[Wynton] Marsalis does not aspire to be an innovator, no one else is allowed to have new ideas either.