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I always like to play very contemporary concepts of swing right next to New Orleans music because it highlights continuum.

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
Like
Swings
Contemporary
Concepts
Next
Music
Continuum
Play
Highlights
Right
Orleans
Always
Swing

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

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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.
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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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Our culture is what we did together. What did Walt Whitman represent for all of us? What was his message to us? That is an inheritance, and when we squander that inheritance we act outside. We don't know who we are we don't know where we are.
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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.
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So when we spend all of our time trying to separate that which is already joined, it's a waste of time.
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If you want to be different, do something different.
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Young kids are always singing and painting. When you get to that second and third grade level, you're supposed to put all that aside.
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Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now.
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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
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Commercialism that has absolutely no relationship to quality whatsoever, only quantitative assessment of a thing.
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And that's the soulful thing about playing: you offer something to somebody. You don't know if they'll like it, but you offer it.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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Thank the good Lord for a job.
Wynton Marsalis
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I play piano and drums very poorly and French horn and tuba all equally as bad.
Wynton Marsalis
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The black hole in democracy is integrity. The great unspoken is integrity. When integrity is not first and foremost, it's quite palpable but not visible. It's always there. Jazz highlights it because musicians and jazz always represented a high level of integrity.
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Ethics are more important than laws. Which means that the exact note is less important than the feeling of the note.
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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