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The whole point is, give me a break with the standards. You go to the average jazz label and suggest a record and they want to know which standards you're going to play. I'm saying let's break the formula.

Branford Marsalis

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Branford Marsalis
Age: 64
Born: 1960
Born: August 26
Actor
Composer
Jazz Musician
Saxophonist
New Orleans
Louisiana
Break
Formulas
Point
Labels
Give
Jazz
Play
Average
Whole
Standards
Giving
Record
Formula
Going
Records
Suggest
Saying
Label

More quotes by Branford Marsalis

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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.
Branford Marsalis
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There's not one Tin Pan Alley song on my record.
Branford Marsalis
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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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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?
Branford Marsalis
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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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So much of Jazz doesn't have an audience other than music students or musicians.
Branford Marsalis
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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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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.
Branford Marsalis
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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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Jazz is so incestuous that it's starting to kill itself.
Branford Marsalis
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One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else.
Branford Marsalis
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My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.
Branford Marsalis
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We all played bad before we played good.
Branford Marsalis
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A lot of musicians have a tough time hearing what we're doing in a trio format.
Branford Marsalis
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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 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.
Branford Marsalis
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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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It's hard to get into Newsweek because, as more of our former intellectual magazines take on a pop focus, if there's no buzz, there's no interest.
Branford Marsalis
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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.
Branford Marsalis
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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.
Branford Marsalis