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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.

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
Half
Slaves
Men
Read
Grown
Time
Father
Educated
Like
Mother
Slave
Book
Knew
Always
Books
Talk
Never
Talking
Would

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Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance.
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Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now.
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Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician
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The bandstand is a sacred place.
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Don't bullshit' just play.
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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.
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New Orleans - the real New Orleans - is the soul of the country.
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If you want to be different, do something different.
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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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I try to put a lot of our music in my music - by that I mean of American music.
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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.
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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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Thank the good Lord for a job.
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The soul gives us resilience - an essential quality since we constantly have to rebound from hardship.
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We need more math classes, we need more science. It's the art of math and the art of science that creates all the innovation, and we have a tradition of great arts, great music.
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Who creates a thing is not as important as what the thing is. Who created baseball? Who created basketball? Who created the space program? Who created - we could go on and on. We could argue about who created something. We all are participants in it.
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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.
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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.
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