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The fact that we are culturally ignorant and we don't know what our heritage is, the price that we pay is that we act outside of ourselves almost all the time. We make very bad decisions how we deal with other people and their culture.

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
People
Deals
Culturally
Decision
Heritage
Almost
Ignorant
Fact
Price
Culture
Decisions
Facts
Outside
Make
Pay
Time
Deal

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

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I remember when I wrote a piece, Blood on the Fields, it was a while ago, it was about slavery and about two characters, and I studied so much of music, I would always go back to the original documents, and as much as I can get original chants and slave chants and different type of beats and rhythms and ring shout.
Wynton Marsalis
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Jazz music is the power of now.
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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For me as a person who's in the arts and as someone who understands the magnitude of our contributions and the price that was paid to contribute to that, that we just have not gotten that together. I will do all that I can to get in front of our kids, to try to teach them, but at a certain point the people have to want it and come towards it.
Wynton Marsalis
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There's so much spirit of integration and democracy in jazz.
Wynton Marsalis
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The history of jazz lets us know that this period in our history is not the only period we've come through together. If we truly understood the history of our national arts, we'd know that we have mutual aspirations, a shared history, in good times and bad.
Wynton Marsalis
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I dress up a certain way because I respect the music.
Wynton Marsalis
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I'm just lucky to have the type of friends and musicians and people dedicated to my music that I do.
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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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.
Wynton Marsalis
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In the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra we play such a diversity of music, with 10 arrangers in the band, we don't really worry about whether it's contemporary or not.
Wynton Marsalis
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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.
Wynton Marsalis
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Ethics are more important than laws.
Wynton Marsalis
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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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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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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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You need a team. You need people to push you. You need opponents.
Wynton Marsalis
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I think that the blues is in everything, so it's not possible to neglect it. You hear somebody go 'Ooh ooh oooh,' and that's the blues. You hear a rock n' roll song. That's the blues. Somebody playing a guitar solo? They're playing the blues.
Wynton Marsalis
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The young very seldom lead anything in our country today. It's been quite some time since a younger generation pushed an older one to a higher standard.
Wynton Marsalis
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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.
Wynton Marsalis