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It's our job to just do as much as we can to enlighten the people about it and to represent it by playing it with some integrity. That's what I try to 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
People
Enlighten
Enlightening
Represent
Integrity
Playing
Jobs
Trying
Much
More quotes by Wynton Marsalis
I dress up a certain way because I respect the music.
Wynton Marsalis
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
My older brother and myself always played together in bands, but we never knew we would be professional musicians.
Wynton Marsalis
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
Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.
Wynton Marsalis
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
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
I try to put a lot of our music in my music - by that I mean of American music.
Wynton Marsalis
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
I feel like a lot of the fundamental material, I've assimilated. So now the question is: Am I going to really get into my spiritual inheritance of music and really develop my abilities?
Wynton Marsalis
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
The best way to be, is to do.
Wynton Marsalis
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
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
It was Dr. King's tireless activism that fostered our modern way of relating to one another.
Wynton Marsalis
So when we spend all of our time trying to separate that which is already joined, it's a waste of time.
Wynton Marsalis
The musicians, Duke Ellington, his thing was not about separating himself from the rest of America. Louis Armstrong - go to the forefathers of our music - Jelly Roll Morton - they're not preaching a separatist agenda. They're not taking their music and saying, This is for me.
Wynton Marsalis
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
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
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.
Wynton Marsalis
