This is one of the major purposes of soul and jazz music; to state what you feel.
— Gregory Porter
The protest songs of the 1960s and 70s managed to blend political and societal views with music from the heart.
You could spend your time with your nose buried in a guidebook, but Amsterdam really is best explored on foot, so you can stumble upon the city's hidden gems. The architecture and the beauty of some of the buildings is also wonderful.
Because I am away so much, I try to establish home in people, rather than places. For example, wherever I get together with my brother the place we're in becomes home.
It's been some surreal moments, you know from performing at Buckingham Palace to having dinner with Stevie Wonder, it's been an amazing ride.
I think sometimes you can be around somebody and take in certain energy and read certain things and you don't know why your neck is stiff. But if you can recognise the negativity, once you identify it and you know what you are dealing with you can make a point to counteract it with a different energy.
And I've made it a choice on my records that sometimes I leave the breath or the trailing note that sometimes falls into a flat or a sharp.
I'm really just a singer that's trying to make some music that strikes to the heart.
When there's an imbalance in terms of what people get to hear, then that's negative. Then blues, jazz, it will die.
I'm very grateful for the success of 'Take Me to the Alley.' The chart position it's reached around the world is very exciting, and its success is an example of the acceptance of my music. I am very thankful.
Gospel music was very prevalent in my house. My mother also loved Nat King Cole. That was some of the first music that I heard. Mahalia Jackson, Nat King Cole and the Mississippi Mass Choir.
I think myself, Jose James, and Robert Glasper are expanding the language - really reminding people that the umbrella of jazz is large and all-encompassing.
I heard Smokey Robinson was singing one of my songs on the radio the other day. Being in the presence of Mavis Staples, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott - Stevie Wonder joined me on stage recently. That blows me away.
I can sing the blues and I have sung the blues. I feel it internally when I'm singing.
My grandmother and my mother and my grandfather, their style of praying was - all day long, they would pray by singing and humming.
I'm very thankful to San Diego for the musical opportunities it gave me.
There were some things in my childhood I thought we'd put to sleep. The idea of one race's supremacy over another. I thought the issue of colour would be put to sleep by the time I had a son. And that's maybe why I had a kid so late.
A Change Is Gonna Come' has always been a powerful song for me as it comes from a place of vulnerability.
I like to absorb the atmosphere and explore wherever I'm working or visiting, so I can't say there's any type of place I don't like. When you travel you have to be open to new experiences.
I can be a bit nerdy so I need a good, clearly marked map, as you can miss out on some of the coolest places in Amsterdam if you don't have a wander down the little side streets.
I've always thought that a Saturday morning at home should be education time. I mean fun education, for example learning to cook a dish or reading about something new. So I put on documentaries, get a bunch of magazines and newspapers and use the morning to make myself better.
The best career advice was to sing with an understanding and internalise the music - that was my mother's advice. Sing with intention, believe what it is you're saying, and think about it, before you sing it.
The nice thing about living in a semi-small town is that I can just go home and switch off. I go home now and I trim roses, rake leaves, wake up early in the morning and scare the raccoons off the lawn! It's kinda nice, that's the way I turn off, in Bakersfield, California.
The voice is probably supposed to have some cracks and pops and some mistakes in it.
All the events that have made up the character and fabric of British culture and everything that has happened to make up the fabric of America culture - art and music - includes the faces and the colours of a lot of people.
There's a lot of female singers and I don't want to dismiss them, but the male - and I have to be careful - the black male voice in jazz, whatever you say, is an important voice, because there's a tradition of the music that should be touched on, there's a sound that should be touched on.
Nat King Cole's lyrics were speaking to me, almost like fatherly advice, when I was listening to him alongside the console stereo player. So that music and that influence comes out of me.
My mother was a minister, so I grew up in a church. My grandfather was a minister; there are a bunch of ministers in my family.
I consider myself a jazz singer. I think I stick to the roots of improvisation, singing in front of the beat, behind the beat, playing with notes and harmonies.
A professional music career goes in starts and stops. Around 2000 I was doing a Broadway show and that was some real good energy.
I think part of my job as a songwriter is to go back in my memory and pull up those pains for other people because somebody else is going to come along who didn't have a good issue with their father.
'Take Me to the Alley' is about trying to uplift the lives of people who have been afflicted, maybe the homeless or somebody with an illness, or maybe they're refugees.
I think every person who gets a football scholarship thinks the potential for great success in college - and maybe even a career in the NFL - is possible.
Music that speaks of politics is less listened to than the music of partying, but it's still there.
As well as having a really strong message, sometimes an artist needs to couple their sentiment with something that's soulful and groovy to listen to.
I love wandering around the vintage shops.
The songs I write and the way I see the world have been affected a certain amount since I became a father.
My part of Brooklyn has always been a very warm neighbourhood, even before I had anything going on in the music industry. When I step out of my house to go for coffee on Saturday mornings, I might say hi to 20 people before I get to the cafe. I think they feel they own me, in a way.
I'm happiest in nature, in trees, rivers, streams, and I'm happiest around my kid - you know that's the funny thing, he is not always in the best of moods, but I am always happiest around him and in nature. Around my family is where I am happiest.
I'm always lobbying for the irrepressible strength of love.
If I can hear the music then no, I don't hit a wrong note. But if I can't hear the music because the audience is screaming or the sound system is bad, then I'm subject to stray.
The funny thing about nationalism is that there are two sides to it. Some parts of it are beautiful, but there's an ugly side as well.
Sometimes I'll be in circles, and I'll say I'm a jazz singer, and they have no idea what that means.
I was 5 years old when I first broke into my mother's records and played Nat King Cole, and sat alongside the stereo and listened to Nat's music.
But sometimes that title 'jazz' can vex people who think they know exactly what jazz always is and will be.
What a Wonderful World' is a love song to nobody and everybody. I'm thinking about songs like that in my writing with 'Take Me to the Alley.'
I had a long-term relationship that failed. I had some health issues. When you dip down emotionally you can gather some things that help you when you do rise. If you go through it and you're OK, you can develop some scars that help you in the time after.
The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.
San Diego is where I really started to get my legs, musically.
You'd think we'd be exhausted by that rhetoric but you're still able to move people with fear and fright and lies that somebody's going to take your place, that in order for someone to rise, you have to fall.
