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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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Wynton Marsalis
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 18
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Trumpeter
New Orleans
Louisiana
Wynton Learson Marsalis
Suffering
Ground
Fruits
Fact
Crisis
Ancestors
Enjoy
Identity
Ancestor
Facts
Labor
Agendas
Art
Battle
Chief
Resolved
Kids
Nation
Chiefs
Amongst
Find
Teach
Arts
Successfully
Like
Nations
Fruit
Battles

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

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If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying.
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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To say that the Afro American created jazz doesn't mean anything bad about Anglo Americans, and I always teach my younger jazz musicians that at this point the entirety of the American tradition is your heritage, and you need to know it.
Wynton Marsalis
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This rebuilding of New Orleans gives us the perfect opportunity to see if we're ready to extend the legacy of Dr. King.
Wynton Marsalis
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Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now.
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'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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If you are serious about American culture and you are serious about Afro-American culture, you are in a lot of pain. You are not - you are not smiling about it.
Wynton Marsalis
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Trumpet players are just belligerant, and cocky, and you know, just hard-headed.
Wynton Marsalis
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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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There's the tradition in jazz of having the “Battle of the Bands” and you do not want to get your head cut when you're playing.
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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The soul gives us resilience - an essential quality since we constantly have to rebound from hardship.
Wynton Marsalis
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What is deeper than respect and love? That’s what we felt: veneration.
Wynton Marsalis
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We learn a language through its song, and even if you don't have music you have the song of people you love's voice, and you'll notice that song in their voice.
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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Many a revolution started with the actions of a few. Only 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence. A few hanging together can lead a nation to change.
Wynton Marsalis
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In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There's no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others.
Wynton Marsalis
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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
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We created the spirituals. We created so much great music, jazz chief amongst our innovations, teaching us how to prize ourselves and how to speak to one another, that our kids don't know that achievement, there's no way in the world that could be good for us.
Wynton Marsalis