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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

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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
Already
Somebody
Talk
Sang
Song
Deaf
Speak
Tone
Even
Meet
Would
Singing
Like
Nobody

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

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I always read all these books about the slaves. My mother is very educated. My father would talk to us like we were grown men. We never knew what he was talking about half the time.
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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.
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There is an idea that a mind is wasted on the arts unless it makes you good in math or science. There is some evidence that the arts might help you in math and science.
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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.
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Ethics are more important than laws.
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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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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.
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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.
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Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.
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I always like to play very contemporary concepts of swing right next to New Orleans music because it highlights continuum.
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Trumpet players are just belligerant, and cocky, and you know, just hard-headed.
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Even in these times, there are still neighbors that will turn their backs on neighbors.
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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.
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So when we spend all of our time trying to separate that which is already joined, it's a waste of time.
Wynton Marsalis
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When I say our, I definitely mean all of America. It's not less pertinent for you because it comes from a Black person, just like a great achievement by an Anglo American is less important.
Wynton Marsalis
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Everything comes out in blues music: joy, pain, struggle. Blues is affirmation with absolute elegance. It's about a man and a woman. So the pain and the struggle in the blues is that universal pain that comes from having your heart broken. Most blues songs are not about social statements.
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Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now.
Wynton Marsalis
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We all teach from that same frame of reference. We're like neighborhood - the people who have had the opportunity through this music to gain a platform and spread the message of this music, which is basically love in a form of communication that's honest and truthful.
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.
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Many of our greatest musicians abandoned all of their aesthetic objectives to try to become pertinent. And, at the end of the day, they never became pop stars. I counter stated that very strongly, and I continue to do that.
Wynton Marsalis