Dianne Reeves

I like coming home and sharing things I've tasted or seen.

I had a few celebrity crushes when I was growing up, including Eddie Kendricks from the Temptations. And I loved Marvin Gaye - I thought he was everything and instantly fell for his voice.

The biggest thing is, when I was coming up, the thing that made you wonderful was your uniqueness. People celebrated that.

The music industry is changing. You only hear a sprinkling of big names, but there are a lot of really wonderful young musicians with great voices and lyrical content who have refined their sound. They're up in here, so don't think they're not. There's this wealth of talent below the surface that's ready to explode.

I had really great art classes. Really great art teachers. Arts played a very important role in having a place to express yourself uniquely.

I'm a chameleon. When you put me in certain soils, musically speaking, I will be in that place.

My friend Harry Belafonte is an activist and musician, an extraordinary man who has dedicated his life to human rights. He taught me the power of words and that music can be used to heal and educate people.

My demographic is very broad. Once they come, they had an idea about jazz, and then they hear me, and they come back with sisters, brothers, and kids. My audience looks like America to me.

My musical selections are a reflection of how I grew up. Because, back then, you could see Miles Davis and Ravi Shankar on the same stage. And nobody thought anything of it, other than the fact that it was great music.

I believe that music should really be without boundaries.

I came up at a time in the late '60s, early '70s where music was without boundaries. You'd go into a music store, and the music was in alphabetical order. I hadn't heard of that word 'genre.'

It's funny: I look at songs, and I guess they each tell a story, and the different songs talk about different things. But they're unified by the rhythm underneath and the way that we decided to arrange and play them.