Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Wynton Marsalis
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 18
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Trumpeter
New Orleans
Louisiana
Wynton Learson Marsalis
Enlightening
Represent
Integrity
Playing
Jobs
Trying
Much
People
Enlighten

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

Image
I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
I never minded giving my opinions. They are just opinions, and I had studied music and I had strong feelings. I was happy for my opinions to join all the other opinions. But you have to be prepared for what comes back, especially if you don't agree with the dominant mythology.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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
Image
The heart of a music is its rhythm. The heart of rhythm section music is the rhythm.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
For Black people, we're one of the only groups of people that for some reason to express love of yourself, in some ways, is misconstrued as a dislike for someone else.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
This is our bandstand. If you don't want to play, get up off the instrument and leave.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
The blues is always there. It's going to be hard out here, but it's all right. It's all right, and that's what the blues teaches you. You got to roll with the punches and find your equilibrium.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
I had to figure out how to survive in New York, and most of my time was occupied in getting an apartment and getting money. A lot of older jazz guys looked out for me and found me gigs and places to stay.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
Don't bullshit' just play.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
The black hole in democracy is integrity. The great unspoken is integrity. When integrity is not first and foremost, it's quite palpable but not visible. It's always there. Jazz highlights it because musicians and jazz always represented a high level of integrity.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
I dress up a certain way because I respect the music.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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
Image
Trumpet players see each other, and it's like we're getting ready to square off or get into a fight or something.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
If you didn't have the amalgam of Blacks and African-type sensibility and European sensibility, you wouldn't have jazz. Even in the negative and in the positive ways - if there was no slavery and the abolition of slavery, there would be no jazz.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
When I first came to New York everybody on the scene would treat me like I could play but I couldn't.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
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.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
Even if nobody's singing, just when you talk, you're singing. I'll meet somebody and say, Oh, I'm tone-deaf. I say, You're not tone-deaf, because if you were tone-deaf you would speak like that. But you're 'Oh, I'm tone-deaf.' You already sang a song to me.
Wynton Marsalis
Image
The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.
Wynton Marsalis