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The musicians I respected were much older than me. I expected them to cut my head, and they did.

Wynton Marsalis

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Wynton Marsalis
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 18
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Trumpeter
New Orleans
Louisiana
Wynton Learson Marsalis
Head
Much
Respected
Musicians
Expected
Older
Musician
Cutting

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

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A beat is a moment in the life a groove.
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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.
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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.
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One thing about excellence, it&Mac226s an exclusive club. And it&Mac226s only for those who really want to pay dues to the s--. My daddy told me when I was a boy: The only way you can be different from other people is to do some s-- they don't want to do.
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The reason why the music [jazz] is important is because it's an art form-an ancient art form-that takes in the mythology of our people.
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Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.
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Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician
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My older brother and myself always played together in bands, but we never knew we would be professional musicians.
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I feel like a lot of the fundamental material, I've assimilated. So now the question is: Am I going to really get into my spiritual inheritance of music and really develop my abilities?
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Jazz celebrates older generations and not just the youth movement. When you sell only to people of a certain age, you get cut off from the main body of experience. The power of couple dancing and courtship, it's elegant, and you wouldn't realize America was once a nation of dancers and singers today. People of all races could dance and sing.
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I always read all these books about the slaves. My mother is very educated. My father would talk to us like we were grown men. We never knew what he was talking about half the time.
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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.
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We started to confuse entertainment with art, because art has a component of entertainment. It has to have that or it becomes too boring. It becomes too lost in its own devices. But I just think that we started to lose, and even before that, it's not necessary.
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Having heard Clifford Brown play all those fast runs, I used to really practice Clarke trumpet exercises all day long so that I could play fast. That's all I wanted to do. I was like a child with a toy.
Wynton Marsalis
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Trumpet players are just belligerant, and cocky, and you know, just hard-headed.
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When me and my brother would go to see our daddy playing, there'd be 30 people in the audience. I was only 14 or 15, but I realised something was wrong.
Wynton Marsalis
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Trumpet players see each other, and it's like we're getting ready to square off or get into a fight or something.
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Even if nobody's singing, just when you talk, you're singing. I'll meet somebody and say, Oh, I'm tone-deaf. I say, You're not tone-deaf, because if you were tone-deaf you would speak like that. But you're 'Oh, I'm tone-deaf.' You already sang a song to me.
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When I say our, I definitely mean all of America. It's not less pertinent for you because it comes from a Black person, just like a great achievement by an Anglo American is less important.
Wynton Marsalis
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I feel that for years of teaching in the country and reading criticism in books, I feel like the things most needed in our culture are the understanding of the meanings of our music. We haven't done that good of job teaching our kids what our music means or how we developed our taste in music that reminds us and teaches us who we are.
Wynton Marsalis