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If it's not going to sound like Terrapin Station, what's the point of playing Terrapin Station?

Branford Marsalis

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Branford Marsalis
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: August 26
Actor
Composer
Jazz Musician
Saxophonist
New Orleans
Louisiana
Sound
Going
Like
Station
Stations
Playing
Point

More quotes by Branford Marsalis

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Everybody talks about finding your voice. Do your homework and your voice will find you.
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The biggest problem with American music right now, is that kids don't listen. They come by it honestly, Americans don't listen anyway. When people go to concerts, they say I'm going to see... not, I'm going to hear.
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If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold.
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I don't care who likes it or buys it. Because if you use that criterion, Mozart would have never written Don Giovanni, Charlie Parker never would have played anything but swing music. There comes a point at which you have to stand up and say, this is what I have to do.
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The way to learn the language is to rip off other players. As Benny Golson told me, We all start off sounding like other cats. And gradually, a lick here or there,we start to sound like ourselves. But it takes a long time to do so... That'swhat he told me, and it worked for me.
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That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you.
Branford Marsalis
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When you're dealing with music without words, titles are more a means of identification than anything else. What's the point of getting lofty?
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If youre going to use standards as criteria for signing musicians, you can sign thousands. If youre going to use some sort of conceptual interpretation thats based on the tradition of those standards, but is trying to move away from it, youre down to about 10 people or so.
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I think that if you keep banging at the door all you need is a little foothold, a little tiny foothold, and then the rest will take care of itself.
Branford Marsalis
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I gave up my base in popular culture when I left the Tonight Show.
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A lot of musicians have a tough time hearing what we're doing in a trio format.
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We played it as long as we could play it on that CD and I think it might be 50 minutes, maybe. What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.
Branford Marsalis
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There's not one Tin Pan Alley song on my record.
Branford Marsalis
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What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America.
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You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don't.
Branford Marsalis
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If I were like a lot of other people, then it wouldn't be fun but since I'm like me, it's okay.
Branford Marsalis
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So much of Jazz doesn't have an audience other than music students or musicians.
Branford Marsalis
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My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.
Branford Marsalis
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It's something that jazz has gotten away from, and it's unfortunate. Players aren't physical anymore.
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The piano is the X factor. People have a tough time following the structures when there's no piano there, spelling it out. It makes it more easily understood, particularly to people who don't know as much about music.
Branford Marsalis