Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity.
Wynton Marsalis
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Wynton Marsalis
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 18
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Trumpeter
New Orleans
Louisiana
Wynton Learson Marsalis
Music
Jazz
Giving
Identity
Type
Gives
Combine
Lose
Flexibility
Loses
Types
Ability
Essential
Part
Essentials
More quotes by Wynton Marsalis
We no longer want to be a melting pot, because we don't understand what is already melted.
Wynton Marsalis
Instead of imposing your will on every situation...focus on including everyone else, and just that little adjustment of attitude gives you the space to understand where and who you are.
Wynton Marsalis
This is our bandstand. If you don't want to play, get up off the instrument and leave.
Wynton Marsalis
The heart of a music is its rhythm. The heart of rhythm section music is the rhythm.
Wynton Marsalis
The best way to be, is to do.
Wynton Marsalis
Ethics are more important than laws.
Wynton Marsalis
The blues is always there. It's going to be hard out here, but it's all right. It's all right, and that's what the blues teaches you. You got to roll with the punches and find your equilibrium.
Wynton Marsalis
I think that the blues is in everything, so it's not possible to neglect it. You hear somebody go 'Ooh ooh oooh,' and that's the blues. You hear a rock n' roll song. That's the blues. Somebody playing a guitar solo? They're playing the blues.
Wynton Marsalis
I remember when I wrote a piece, Blood on the Fields, it was a while ago, it was about slavery and about two characters, and I studied so much of music, I would always go back to the original documents, and as much as I can get original chants and slave chants and different type of beats and rhythms and ring shout.
Wynton Marsalis
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
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
I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.
Wynton Marsalis
I dress up a certain way because I respect the music.
Wynton Marsalis
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
I try to find the core values that are so fundamental that they transcend ethnic identity. That doesn't mean I run from it. I embrace African-American culture and I love it and embrace it, but it is a part of a human identity. So I'm always trying to make a larger human statement.
Wynton Marsalis
For me as a person who's in the arts and as someone who understands the magnitude of our contributions and the price that was paid to contribute to that, that we just have not gotten that together. I will do all that I can to get in front of our kids, to try to teach them, but at a certain point the people have to want it and come towards it.
Wynton Marsalis
Maybe the preoccupation with technological progress has overshadowed our concern with human progress.
Wynton Marsalis
Swing is extreme coordination. It's a maintaining balance, equilibrium. It's about executing very difficult rhythms with a panache and a feeling in the context of very strict time. So, everything about the swing is about some guideline and some grid and the elegant way that you negotiate your way through that grid.
Wynton Marsalis
The history of jazz lets us know that this period in our history is not the only period we've come through together. If we truly understood the history of our national arts, we'd know that we have mutual aspirations, a shared history, in good times and bad.
Wynton Marsalis
Jazz is not just 'Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.' It's a very structured thing that comes down from a tradition and requires a lot of thought and study.
Wynton Marsalis
