Bill Clinton: “Thank you, Dianne. Thank you, Billy. Thank all of our wonderful musicians. And I want to say a special word of thanks to…”

“Thank you, Dianne. Thank you, Billy. Thank all of our wonderful musicians. And I want to say a special word of thanks to Marian and to Wynton for showing us how much jazz can tell us about our country, our century, our deepest aspirations. I did grow up loving jazz. I was inspired, moved by the agility of Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins, by the inventiveness of Thelonious Monk, by the incredible inventive genius of John Coltrane and the incomparable Miles Davis. They and many others opened my ears and opened the ears of millions of our fellow citizens to a music that was profoundly human and distinctly American. But if jazz is an American invention, it certainly travels well-- from club to concert hall, from coast to coast, across the oceans and back, returning with the imprint of other cultures and new influences. Music that began as American at the core truly has become now the music of the world. Jazz is also, as it has long been, the international language of liberation, what a man named Willis Conover called the ``Music of Freedom.'' For more than 40 years during the cold war, Willis Conover hosted the jazz program on the Voice of America. Dictators banned it and jammed his broadcasts because they understood the power of jazz to unleash the human spirit. But they could not stop the music. Six nights a week, as Conover started his show with the first bars of ``Take the A Train,'' 30 million listeners in the Soviet bloc would join him for the ride. As far away as China and as recently as 1989, students at Tiananmen Square hummed the tunes they heard on the Voice of America, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie. It became sort of a not-so-secret code in the struggle for human rights. Tonight we are honored by the presence of someone who has stood at the frontline of that struggle and who can tell us the meaning of jazz for those yearning to be free. A few years ago, as I said tonight, when we were in Prague, we even performed a few tunes together. Please join me in welcoming an artist and a leader whose work is a tribute to the human spirit, and who perhaps will tell us a little bit about the impact of jazz on his Velvet Revolution, President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic. [President Havel made brief remarks, and the program continued with a question-and-answer session with participants around the world linked by Internet to the performance.] The First Lady. This is from Sarah Miles in Havasu, Alberta, Canada. Subject: Influences of jazz. Question: Mr. President, how did jazz influence your choice of going into public service over private business? We love you in Alberta. Respectfully. [Laughter]”