Wynton Marsalis Quotes About Jazz

Quotes about: Jazz

• Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Jazz, Armstrong, Music Is

• And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Jazz, Offers, Knows

• As long as there is democracy, there will be people wanting to play jazz because nothing else will ever so perfectly capture the democratic process in sound. Jazz means working things out musically with other people. You have to listen to other musicians and play with them even if you don't agree with what they're playing. It teaches you the very opposite of racism and anti-Semitism. It teaches you that the world is big enough to accommodate us all.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Mean, Opposites, Play

• How great musicians demonstrate a mutual respect and trust on the bandstand can alter your outlook on the world and enrich every aspect of your life, understanding what it means to be a global citizen in the most modern sense.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Mean, Understanding

  Wynton Marsalis, Geoffrey Ward (2008). “Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life”, p.15, Random House

• Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Style, Substance

  "Bibi, Moses, and Churchill" by Rabbi Michael M. Cohen, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 19, 2015.

• It's harder to build than destroy. To build is to engage and change. In jazz, we call progressing harmonies changes. Changes are like obstacles on a speed course. They demand your attention and require you to be present. They are coming...they are here..... and then they are gone. It's how life comes. Each moment is a procession from the future into the past and the sweet spot is always the present. Live in that sweet spot. Be present.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Graduation, Sweet, Past

• Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It's conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as they make split-second decisions to fulfill what they feel the moment requires.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Decision, Splits

  Wynton Marsalis, Geoffrey Ward (2008). “Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life”, p.8, Random House

• Through improvisation, jazz teaches you about yourself. And through swing, it teaches you that other people are individuals too. It teaches you how to coordinate with them.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Swings, People, Jazz Improvisation

  "Wynton Marsalis: Jazz Messenger". Interview with Eugene Holley, Jr., www.ebony.com. September 4, 2012.

• Because the blues is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It's a 12-bar form that's played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that's been used by rock n' roll. It's related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Inspiring, Country, Vocabulary

• Jazz music is America's past and its potential, summed up and sanctified and accessible to anybody who learns to listen to, feel, and understand it. The music can connect us to our earlier selves and to our better selves-to-come. It can remind us of where we fit on the time line of human achievement, an ultimate value of art.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Art, Past, Self

  Wynton Marsalis, Geoffrey Ward (2008). “Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life”, p.13, Random House

• A beat is a moment in the life a groove.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Jazz, Moments

• People have taken time out of their day and spent their money to come sit down at a concert. And it's jazz music-it's not easy for them to get to it. I don't want them ever to feel that I'm taking their presence lightly.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Taken, People, Want

• Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Years, Play, Three

• Jazz is not just 'Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.' It's a very structured thing that comes down from a tradition and requires a lot of thought and study.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Men, Jazz, Study

• The bandstand is a sacred place.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Sacred, Sacred Places, Jazz

• Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Art, Who We Are, Way

  "Third Screen". Interview with Vickie Karp, www.huffingtonpost.com. January 18, 2009.

• Sustained intensity equals ecstacy.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Jazz, Intensity

• The real power of Jazz is that a group of people can come together and create improvised art and negotiate their agendas... and that negotiation is the art

  Wynton Marsalis

  Art, Real, People

• Blues is like the roux in a gumbo. People ask me if jazz always has the blues in it. I say, if it sounds good it does.

  Wynton Marsalis

  People, Sound, Gumbo

• Jazz is democracy in music.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Inspirational, Life, Democracy

• The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Musician, Gabriel, Lasts

• Jazz music is the power of now.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Jazz, Power Of Now

• Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Sound, Jazz

• In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There's no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Vocabulary, Choices

• Some stances are just conducive to swinging. If I stand up straight for too long it's harder to swing. Plus my feet hurt.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Hurt, Swings, Feet

  Wynton Marsalis, Carl Vigeland (2002). “Jazz In The Bittersweet Blues Of Life”, p.72, Da Capo Press

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