Aging & Wisdom Quote by Billy Higgins

There is a quiet kind of radicalism in Billy Higgins saying he enjoys young people being interested in what they can do. Not what they can buy, not who they can impress, not even what they can become in some vague, branded future tense. What they can do: a musician's metric, blunt and humane, grounded in action rather than identity.

Coming from a jazz drummer who built a career on making everyone else sound braver, the line reads like a philosophy of mentorship. Higgins isn’t praising youth as a symbol; he’s praising curiosity with direction. Jazz culture has always run on apprenticeship and the bandstand as classroom, where talent gets sharpened in public and humility is non-negotiable. His enjoyment is less sentimental pride than relief: the music survives when the next generation shows up ready to practice, to listen, to fail, to try again.

The subtext is also a gentle rebuke to a world that often sells young artists the myth of instant arrival. In jazz especially, the glamour narrative collapses fast under the real demands of time, touch, and feel. Higgins nudges attention away from pedigree and toward capability, the kind you earn note by note. He’s also celebrating agency. Interest in "what they can do" is interest in their own power, their own craft, their own voice - not permission granted from above.

It’s a drummer’s sentence: spare, rhythmic, and all about the groove of work.