Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The Duke and Swing represent affirmation in the face of adversity.
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
Adversity
Jazz
Face
Duke
Faces
Dukes
Affirmation
Swing
Swings
Represent
More quotes by Wynton Marsalis
You need a team. You need people to push you. You need opponents.
Wynton Marsalis
Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.
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
The arts shows that you're civilized, and it makes life sweet. So you can exist and you can buy more things and you can be more - we're dealing with a form of commercialism that obscures a prior relationship to quality, and it's a national problem.
Wynton Marsalis
It's like we're suffering from an identity crisis, and that identity is in our arts and the fact that we don't find it chief amongst our agendas to teach our kids who we are as a nation and the battles we've had on this ground and how they've been successfully resolved. We can't enjoy the fruits of the labor of our ancestors.
Wynton Marsalis
I feel like a lot of the fundamental material, I've assimilated. So now the question is: Am I going to really get into my spiritual inheritance of music and really develop my abilities?
Wynton Marsalis
Milk in a mother's breast-that's cool. Milk in a mouth-that's cool too. But milk in my trumpet? Not so cool. I have to play that thing.
Wynton Marsalis
This is our bandstand. If you don't want to play, get up off the instrument and leave.
Wynton Marsalis
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
Jazz music is the power of now.
Wynton Marsalis
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
Ethics are more important than laws. Which means that the exact note is less important than the feeling of the note.
Wynton Marsalis
I never minded giving my opinions. They are just opinions, and I had studied music and I had strong feelings. I was happy for my opinions to join all the other opinions. But you have to be prepared for what comes back, especially if you don't agree with the dominant mythology.
Wynton Marsalis
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
And my identity...I never really wondered about it because, unfortunately, I sounded like myself. People be saying I sound like Miles or Clifford Brown.
Wynton Marsalis
Even if nobody's singing, just when you talk, you're singing. I'll meet somebody and say, Oh, I'm tone-deaf. I say, You're not tone-deaf, because if you were tone-deaf you would speak like that. But you're 'Oh, I'm tone-deaf.' You already sang a song to me.
Wynton Marsalis
We started to confuse entertainment with art, because art has a component of entertainment. It has to have that or it becomes too boring. It becomes too lost in its own devices. But I just think that we started to lose, and even before that, it's not necessary.
Wynton Marsalis
Everything comes out in blues music: joy , pain , struggle . Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance.
Wynton Marsalis
When those who are educated using their education to exploit those who aren't. That's what the sub-prime scandal represents - people of education using it at the expense of others. At Jazz at Lincoln Center, we have 22 educational programs. Not just the word but the substance of education is guided by the arts.
Wynton Marsalis
When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more and more each year.
Wynton Marsalis
