Wynton Marsalis Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• Everything about the swing is about some guideline and some grid and the elegant way that you negotiate your way through that grid.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Swings, Way, Grids

  "Wynton Marsalis Pays Homage to Jazz's Past by Investing in Its Future". "PBS NewsHour" with Jim Lehrer, www.pbs.org. May 31, 2011.

  12 Copy quote

• We don't have the leadership or the understanding of the value of this, and when your political systems and your economic systems start to fail, it's only a cultural understanding that allows you to reconstruct them and to get back to who you are. For some reason, it hasn't dawned on us yet.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Political, Understanding, Failing

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• I remember when I wrote a piece, "Blood on the Fields," it was a while ago, it was about slavery and about two characters, and I studied so much of music, I would always go back to the original documents, and as much as I can get original chants and slave chants and different type of beats and rhythms and ring shout.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Character, Blood, Two

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• When I did the Abyssinian mass, I went through the whole history of the church music and the gospel music, even with the Anglo American hymns, the Afro American hymns, the spirituals and how it developed, up to Thomas Dorsey and the Dixie Hummingbirds, going through the history of the music, jazz musicians.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Church Music, Hymns, Musician

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• When I came to New York, to Brooklyn, I met Alvin Ailey and Stanley Crouch and August Wilson. They were always putting things in a philosophical context. All the great jazz musicians did, too. There was always a sub-context to what they were saying about music even though they would be very down home and earthy. So I started to develop, in addition to my power and ability to simply hear, a way to place myself in a time.

  Wynton Marsalis

  New York, Philosophical, Home

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

  4 Copy quote

• Jazz music is the power of now.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Music, Jazz, Power Of Now

  8 Copy quote

• I didn't want to get that ring around my lips from practicing the trumpet, because I thought the girls wouldn't like me. So I never practiced.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Girl, Want, Lips

  8 Copy quote

• Certain music, jazz in particular, has the ability to make you a better citizen of the world. It helps you expand your world view and gives you more confidence in your cultural achievements. Improvisational jazz teaches you about yourself while the swing in jazz teaches you how to work with others

  Wynton Marsalis

  Swings, Views, Giving

  6 Copy quote

• Art is a luxury. It's not necessary for you to - you can work your job and you can make some money and never know who Walt Whitman was, and never read a poem.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Art, Jobs, Luxury

  Source: www.pbs.org

  6 Copy quote

• Thank the good Lord for a job.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Jobs, Lord

  6 Copy quote

• I try to put a lot of our music in my music - by that I mean of American music.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Mean, Trying, American Music

  Source: www.pbs.org

  6 Copy quote

• The musicians, Duke Ellington, his thing was not about separating himself from the rest of America. Louis Armstrong - go to the forefathers of our music - Jelly Roll Morton - they're not preaching a separatist agenda. They're not taking their music and saying, "This is for me."

  Wynton Marsalis

  America, Musician, Jelly

  Source: www.pbs.org

  6 Copy quote

• When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more and more each year.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Years, Listening, Jazz

  Scholastic Interview, www.scholastic.com. February 2002.

  6 Copy quote

• We need more math classes, we need more science. It's the art of math and the art of science that creates all the innovation, and we have a tradition of great arts, great music.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Art, Math, Class

  Source: www.pbs.org

  7 Copy quote

• I worry more about the marketing that's taken hold since the 70s. The Jazz era, the Swing era, those were huge. Entire decades were named for music. In the 1940s - after World War II - changes in taxation, ballrooms closing, people moving to the suburbs, and the onset of target marketing and the confusion of commerce with art caused some things to happen as a result that have taken us away from jazz and what jazz offers us.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Art, War, Moving

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

  7 Copy quote

• Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" is still in print. They're debating right now over Mark Twain. He's still available. Winslow Homer can still be seen. Our arts are - they're there. We got to go get them and understand that this is an important legacy for our country.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Country, Art, Important

  Source: www.pbs.org

  7 Copy quote

• I think that when the education system started to be dismantled during the first Great Depression in the 1930s, we didn't recover from that.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Thinking, Firsts, Great Depression

  Source: www.pbs.org

  7 Copy quote

• You don't try to duplicate certain things that other cats do, because you could never do it as well as they do. Nobody can get on that tenor saxophone and play like Trane, because he's the only one who can spell out chords and sound good when he does it.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Cat, Play, Trying

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• There is an idea that a mind is wasted on the arts unless it makes you good in math or science. There is some evidence that the arts might help you in math and science.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Art, Math, Ideas

  "A life in music: Wynton Marsalis". Interview with Nicholas Wroe, www.theguardian.com. July 17, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

• When I first came to New York everybody on the scene would treat me like I could play but I couldn't.

  Wynton Marsalis

  New York, Play, Firsts

  Interview with Steve LeVeille, radiofreesteve.wordpress.com. 1994.

  4 Copy quote

• He [Benny Carter] is all that every jazz musician the world over wants to be. He's performed 20,000 nights. How many shoes have been shined? How much mascara put on? Rouge? How many of those impossible bowties have been tied? How many love songs have been sung? How many dances have been danced? How many have passed to the sound of his music? It's been said that a man should not be forced to live up to his art. Benny Carter is one of the rare instances when we wonder whether the great art that a man has created can live up to him.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Song, Art, Night

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• Ethics are more important than laws.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Law, Important, Ethics

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• It was Dr. King's tireless activism that fostered our modern way of relating to one another.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Kings, Drs, Way

  7 Copy quote

• There's so much spirit of integration and democracy in jazz.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Democracy, Spirit, Jazz

  4 Copy quote

• This rebuilding of New Orleans gives us the perfect opportunity to see if we're ready to extend the legacy of Dr. King.

  Wynton Marsalis

  Kings, Opportunity, New Orleans

  7 Copy quote

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