Quote

We're blues people. And blues never lets tragedy have the last word.

Wynton Marsalis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Wynton Marsalis
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 18
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Trumpeter
New Orleans
Louisiana
Wynton Learson Marsalis
Tragedy
Word
Lasts
Last
Music
Never
People
Lets
Blues

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

Image
Thank the good Lord for a job.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I had to figure out how to survive in New York, and most of my time was occupied in getting an apartment and getting money. A lot of older jazz guys looked out for me and found me gigs and places to stay.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
No particular music makes me feel nostalgic. If it's great, it just keeps me in the present moment. That level of music is like a classic story, like the Iliad-something so perfect it can never be old.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
I always like to play very contemporary concepts of swing right next to New Orleans music because it highlights continuum.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
I dress up a certain way because I respect the music.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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
Image
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
Image
This music heals people because music is vibration, and the proper vibration heals.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
Don't bullshit' just play.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
If you looked around, you'd be glad you couldn't see.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
The real power of Jazz is that a group of people can come together and create improvised art and negotiate their agendas... and that negotiation is the art
Wynton Marsalis
Image
Sustained intensity equals ecstacy.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
It's really not a stretch. The checks and balances are the same. The drums are the executive branch. The jazz orchestra is the legislative branch. Logic and reason are like jazz solos. The bass player is the judicial branch. One our greatest ever is Milt Hinton, and his nickname is The Judge.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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
Image
The Duke and Swing represent affirmation in the face of adversity.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
Love is the spiritual essence of what we do. Technique is the manifestation of the preparation and investment as a result of the love.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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.
Wynton Marsalis