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Let the critics criticize and let the doers do.

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
Doers
Criticize
Critics

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

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I got my first trumpet when I was six years old, from Al Hirt. My father was playing in Al Hirt's band at that time.
Wynton Marsalis
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What takes its place is very dry education. And the tools that actually can teach you - singing and playing, learning how to participate with other people, spiritual richness - are replaced with a big emphasis on how to memorize things. That's such an incomplete education. Survival of the fittest used to mean being bigger and stronger.
Wynton Marsalis
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I have absolutely no idea what my generation did to enrich our democracy. We dropped the ball. We entered a period of complacency and closed our eyes to the public corruption of our democracy.
Wynton Marsalis
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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
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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
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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.
Wynton Marsalis
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A beat is a moment in the life a groove.
Wynton Marsalis
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Humility is the doorway 2 truth & clarity of objectives... it's the doorway 2 learning.
Wynton Marsalis
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Having heard Clifford Brown play all those fast runs, I used to really practice Clarke trumpet exercises all day long so that I could play fast. That's all I wanted to do. I was like a child with a toy.
Wynton Marsalis
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There is an idea that a mind is wasted on the arts unless it makes you good in math or science. There is some evidence that the arts might help you in math and science.
Wynton Marsalis
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Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician
Wynton Marsalis
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This is our bandstand. If you don't want to play, get up off the instrument and leave.
Wynton Marsalis
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Sustained intensity equals ecstacy.
Wynton Marsalis
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New Orleans - the real New Orleans - is the soul of the country.
Wynton Marsalis
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When did we begin to lose faith in our ability to effect change?
Wynton Marsalis
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I feel that for years of teaching in the country and reading criticism in books, I feel like the things most needed in our culture are the understanding of the meanings of our music. We haven't done that good of job teaching our kids what our music means or how we developed our taste in music that reminds us and teaches us who we are.
Wynton Marsalis
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What I really have in my head, my imagination, my understanding of music, I never really get that out.
Wynton Marsalis
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We all teach from that same frame of reference. We're like neighborhood - the people who have had the opportunity through this music to gain a platform and spread the message of this music, which is basically love in a form of communication that's honest and truthful.
Wynton Marsalis
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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.
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