Time & Perspective Quote by Hazel Scott

Hazel Scott’s line lands like a mission statement with teeth: the stage isn’t a platform for self-expression so much as a border crossing, and the musician is the person smuggling people through. “Emissaries” is diplomatic language, but it implies stakes - representation, risk, persuasion. She’s not describing art as private therapy or vibes; she’s describing it as public work, the kind that changes what audiences think they’re allowed to like.

The kicker is “make converts.” That’s a deliberately charged word in a field that often pretends taste is natural and apolitical. Conversion suggests resistance on the other side: an audience that arrives skeptical, fenced in by genre snobbery, racism, or the soft tyranny of what’s already popular. Scott, a virtuoso pianist and singer who fought segregation and challenged Hollywood’s limits for Black performers, understood that every appearance was an argument. Not just for jazz, but for the full humanity and authority of the people making it.

The subtext is about power. Public performance isn’t neutral; it’s a negotiation with gatekeepers, critics, and the paying crowd. Scott frames musicianship as persuasion because she’s naming what’s usually hidden: music recruits. It builds allegiance, rewires instinct, makes yesterday’s “noise” feel like necessity. In her mouth, conversion is both artistic ambition and civic strategy - a way to expand the audience’s palate until it can no longer comfortably shrink the world.