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

Wynton Marsalis

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Wynton Marsalis
Age: 62
Born: 1961
Born: October 18
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Trumpeter
New Orleans
Louisiana
Wynton Learson Marsalis
Spirit
Much
Integration
Jazz
Democracy

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

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Benny Goodman's band was integrated before baseball. Even before it was physically integrated, music was integrated. Everyone listened to Armstrong and Ellington. The 20s was called the Jazz Age. It's part of being American.
Wynton Marsalis
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Grace Kelly plays with intelligence, wit and feeling. She has a great amount of natural ability and the ability to adapt. That is the hallmark of a first-class jazz musician.
Wynton Marsalis
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For Black people, we're one of the only groups of people that for some reason to express love of yourself, in some ways, is misconstrued as a dislike for someone else.
Wynton Marsalis
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The heart of a music is its rhythm. The heart of rhythm section music is the rhythm.
Wynton Marsalis
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We created the spirituals. We created so much great music, jazz chief amongst our innovations, teaching us how to prize ourselves and how to speak to one another, that our kids don't know that achievement, there's no way in the world that could be good for us.
Wynton Marsalis
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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
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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
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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
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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
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It's our job to just do as much as we can to enlighten the people about it and to represent it by playing it with some integrity. That's what I try to do.
Wynton Marsalis
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Don't bullshit' just play.
Wynton Marsalis
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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.
Wynton Marsalis
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The majority of the high schools and the public schools in N.Y.C. don't even have band programs. Hip-hop in a lot of ways is an outgrowth of a lack of instruments and a desire to play music, so we can't really fault the kids for that.
Wynton Marsalis
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I try to put a lot of our music in my music - by that I mean of American music.
Wynton Marsalis
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I believed in studying just because I knew education was a privilege. It was the discipline of study, to get into the habit of doing something that you don't want to do.
Wynton Marsalis
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In the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra we play such a diversity of music, with 10 arrangers in the band, we don't really worry about whether it's contemporary or not.
Wynton Marsalis
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But you listen to Coltrane and that's something human, something that's about elevation. It's like making love to a woman. It's about something of value, it's not just loud. It doesn't have that violent connotation to it. I wanted to be a jazz musician so bad, but I really couldn't. There was no way I could figure out to learn how to play.
Wynton Marsalis
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It's important to address young people in the reopening of New Orleans. In rebuilding, let's revisit the potential of American democracy and American glory.
Wynton Marsalis
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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.
Wynton Marsalis
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Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now.
Wynton Marsalis