Art & Creativity Quote by Sonny Rollins

Rollins isn’t asking for applause; he’s calling out a long-running cultural hustle where America loves jazz’s cool but resists granting its makers full dignity. The repetition in “treated and are treated” is doing quiet work: it collapses decades into one continuous tense, refusing the comforting story that disrespect was a past problem solved by a few Grammy tributes and a Ken Burns montage. He’s insisting the injury is structural, not sentimental.

His focus on “dignity” lands harder than “recognition” or “success.” Dignity is about conditions: fair pay, artistic control, critical seriousness, and basic human regard in a business that historically treated jazz musicians as disposable nightlife labor even as it mined their innovation. “Due” is an almost legal word, a demand for back pay in cultural currency - the overdue invoice of Black genius routinely rebranded, sanitized, or filed under “entertainment” instead of “art.”

The subtext is also a critique of gatekeeping. Jazz has been praised loudly while being contained: relegated to niche festivals, museumified as “heritage,” or used as background texture for prestige without confronting the social reality that produced it. Rollins, a titan who could easily coast on reverence, frames his advocacy as a lifelong posture - “always been” - signaling that excellence alone doesn’t correct injustice. You can be canonical and still be undervalued; you can be celebrated and still be denied full respect.

In Rollins’s mouth, this isn’t abstract politics. It’s the working musician’s ledger: who gets credited, who gets paid, who gets listened to seriously, and who gets written off as atmosphere.