Quote

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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Wynton Marsalis
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: October 18
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Trumpeter
New Orleans
Louisiana
Wynton Learson Marsalis
People
Notice
Voice
Learn
Language
Song
Music
Even
Love

More quotes by Wynton Marsalis

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I have friends who will critique me much harder than any review.
Wynton Marsalis
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Jazz is not just 'Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.' It's a very structured thing that comes down from a tradition and requires a lot of thought and study.
Wynton Marsalis
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Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity.
Wynton Marsalis
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It's really not a stretch. The checks and balances are the same. The drums are the executive branch. The jazz orchestra is the legislative branch. Logic and reason are like jazz solos. The bass player is the judicial branch. One our greatest ever is Milt Hinton, and his nickname is The Judge.
Wynton Marsalis
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Jazz is democracy in music.
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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Only a few act - the rest of us reap the benefits of their risk.
Wynton Marsalis
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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
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A beat is a moment in the life a groove.
Wynton Marsalis
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Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.
Wynton Marsalis
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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
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The arts speak across epochs. If you think that people started to build a cathedral in 1315 and the people worked on that cathedral, it wasn't going to be finished until 1585. So they were thinking 200 years from now. Maybe by the time I die, this wall might be put up.
Wynton Marsalis
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I believe in professionalism, but playing is not like a job. You have to be grateful to have the opportunity to play.
Wynton Marsalis
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We no longer want to be a melting pot, because we don't understand what is already melted.
Wynton Marsalis
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When me and my brother would go to see our daddy playing, there'd be 30 people in the audience. I was only 14 or 15, but I realised something was wrong.
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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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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My thing is, once you start to put a backbeat on your music or something that has a machine in it, you have popularity, but you lose the flexibility. And you lose a richness.
Wynton Marsalis
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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
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Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician
Wynton Marsalis