Quote

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

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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
Way
Grid
Grids
Guidelines
Negotiate
Swing
Swings
Elegant
Guideline
Everything
Panache

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

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Those who play for applause....Tha t’s all they get.
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Everything comes out in blues music: joy , pain , struggle . Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance.
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Love is the spiritual essence of what we do. Technique is the manifestation of the preparation and investment as a result of the love.
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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.
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No particular music makes me feel nostalgic. If it's great, it just keeps me in the present moment. That level of music is like a classic story, like the Iliad-something so perfect it can never be old.
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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
Wynton Marsalis
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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.
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.
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Ethics are more important than laws.
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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My schedule is always tight. But I like to have the pressure of having to finish doing something it gives me an added edge.
Wynton Marsalis
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I'm not a person who writes really abstract things with oblique references. I look at abstraction like I look at condiments. Give me some Tabasco sauce, some ketchup, some mayonnaise. I love all of that. Put it on a trumpet. I've just got to have the ketchup and Tabasco sauce. That's my attitude about musical philosophy.
Wynton Marsalis
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Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.
Wynton Marsalis
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We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.
Wynton Marsalis
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There's so much spirit of integration and democracy in jazz.
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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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
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What, other than injustice, could be the reason that the displaced citizens of New Orleans cannot be accommodated by the richest nation in the world?
Wynton Marsalis
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Art is a luxury. It's not necessary for you to - you can work your job and you can make some money and never know who Walt Whitman was, and never read a poem.
Wynton Marsalis
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The reason why the music [jazz] is important is because it's an art form-an ancient art form-that takes in the mythology of our people.
Wynton Marsalis