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The Duke and Swing represent affirmation in the face of adversity.

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
Faces
Dukes
Affirmation
Swing
Swings
Represent
Adversity
Jazz
Face
Duke

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

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I didn't have a philosophical understanding of music until I came to New York. I didn't understand how it applied to my kind and my generation. I thought it was just old people talking.
Wynton Marsalis
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Many of our greatest musicians abandoned all of their aesthetic objectives to try to become pertinent. And, at the end of the day, they never became pop stars. I counter stated that very strongly, and I continue to do that.
Wynton Marsalis
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Jazz is not the kind of music you are going to learn to play in three or four years or that you can just get because you have some talent for music.
Wynton Marsalis
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There's always the cliche of the choir shouting and clapping. OK, you have to do that, but there's also introspective parts, parts where you just follow someone that's preaching. There's lots of different emotions and moods that a service requires.
Wynton Marsalis
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Whenever you face a man who's playing your instrument, there's a competition.
Wynton Marsalis
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I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice.
Wynton Marsalis
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Through first-class education, a generation marches down the long uncertain road of the future with confidence.
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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I dress up a certain way because I respect the music.
Wynton Marsalis
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We learn a language through its song, and even if you don't have music you have the song of people you love's voice, and you'll notice that song in their voice.
Wynton Marsalis
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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
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The soul gives us resilience - an essential quality since we constantly have to rebound from hardship.
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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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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When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said 'Are you sure you're Ellis's son?'
Wynton Marsalis
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Some stances are just conducive to swinging. If I stand up straight for too long it's harder to swing. Plus my feet hurt.
Wynton Marsalis
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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
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Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.
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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I almost never watch TV, except for '60 Minutes' and pro football. I love Drew Brees, the Manning brothers and the Steelers' linebackers.
Wynton Marsalis