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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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My Thing Is, Once

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.

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We Don't Have The Leadership Or The Understanding Of The Value Of This, And When Your Political Systems And Your Economic Systems Start To Fail, It's Only A Cultural Understanding That Allows You To Reconstruct Them And To Get Back To Who You Are. For Some Reason, It Hasn't Dawned On Us Yet.

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.

I Always Like To Play Very Contemporary Concepts Of Swing Right Next To New Orleans Music Because It Highlights Continuum.

I Wanted To Make Somebody Feel Like Coltrane Made Me Feel, Listening To It.

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Jazz Improvisation

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The Best Way To Be, Is To Do.

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Those Who Play For Applause....tha T’s All They Get.

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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.

I Try To Put A Lot Of Our Music In My Music - By That I Mean Of American Music.

I Play Piano And Drums Very Poorly And French Horn And Tuba All Equally As Bad.

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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.

When I First Came To New York Everybody On The Scene Would Treat Me Like I Could Play But I Couldn't.

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.

Ethics Are More Important Than Laws. Which Means That The Exact Note Is Less Important Than The Feeling Of The Note.

We Need More Math Classes, We Need More Science. It's The Art Of Math And The Art Of Science That Creates All The Innovation, And We Have A Tradition Of Great Arts, Great Music.

I Travel Up And Down The Country And I've Been All Around The Middle Of America For Many Years. Middle America Is Not One Big Mass Of People With A Proverbial Beer In Its Hand, Keeping The Country Down. That Is Not My Experience Of It And I Don't Labor Under That Misconception. And We Have A Long Tradition Of Coming Together Through Music In Our Country.

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.

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.

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.

When I Did The Abyssinian Mass, I Went Through The Whole History Of The Church Music And The Gospel Music, Even With The Anglo American Hymns, The Afro American Hymns, The Spirituals And How It Developed, Up To Thomas Dorsey And The Dixie Hummingbirds, Going Through The History Of The Music, Jazz Musicians.

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.

My Schedule Is Always Tight. But I Like To Have The Pressure Of Having To Finish Doing Something; It Gives Me An Added Edge.

How Great Musicians Demonstrate A Mutual Respect And Trust On The Bandstand Can Alter Your Outlook On The World And Enrich Every Aspect Of Your Life, Understanding What It Means To Be A Global Citizen In The Most Modern Sense.

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.

The End Of The Day

A Beat Is A Moment In The Life A Groove.

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.

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There Are Forces All Around You Who Wish To Exploit Division, Rob You Of Your Freedom, And Tell You What To Think. But Young Folks Can Rekindle The Weary Spirit Of A Slumbering Nation.

We Looked Up To Our Father. He Still Is Much Greater Than Us.

There Really Have Only Ever Been A Few People In Each Generation Who Step Out, Are Willing To Put Themselves On The Line, And Risk Everything For Their Beliefs.

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.

The Heart Of A Music Is Its Rhythm. The Heart Of Rhythm Section Music Is The Rhythm.

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.

Abolition Of Slavery

I'll Write Down And Catalogue All The Different Devices That Are Americana To Me, And I Try To Have A Historic Depth And Breadth And Also The Things That We Do In Our Time, The Type Of Vamps And Chants, Things That Are Available To Us.

There Was One Thing Beethoven Didn't Do. When One Of His String Quartets Was Played, You Can Believe The Second Violin Wasn't Improvising.

The Only Justification For Looking Down On Anyone Is That You're Going To Stop And Pick Them Up.

Music Is The Art Of All The Invisible Things That Are Real. Art, Emotion, Spiritual Essence, Consciousness - These Things Are Hard To Prove. Music Helps You To Focus On Your Sound. We Understand That For Very Young Kids.

People Have Taken Time Out Of Their Day And Spent Their Money To Come Sit Down At A Concert. And It's Jazz Music-it's Not Easy For Them To Get To It. I Don't Want Them Ever To Feel That I'm Taking Their Presence Lightly.

What, Other Than Injustice, Could Be The Reason That The Displaced Citizens Of New Orleans Cannot Be Accommodated By The Richest Nation In The World?

The Soul Gives Us Resilience - An Essential Quality Since We Constantly Have To Rebound From Hardship.

New Orleans - The Real New Orleans - Is The Soul Of The Country.

We Always Hear About The Rights Of Democracy, But The Major Responsibility Of It Is Participation.

I Have Friends Who Will Critique Me Much Harder Than Any Review.

Swing Is Extreme Coordination. It's A Maintaining Balance, Equilibrium. It's About Executing Very Difficult Rhythms With A Panache And A Feeling In The Context Of Very Strict Time. So, Everything About The Swing Is About Some Guideline And Some Grid And The Elegant Way That You Negotiate Your Way Through That Grid.

When I Auditioned For My High School Band The Band Director Was Excited Because My Father Was Known To Be A Great Musician. When He Heard Me, He Said 'are You Sure You're Ellis's Son?'

Because The Blues Is The Basis Of Most American Music In The 20th Century. It's A 12-bar Form That's Played By Jazz, Bluegrass And Country Musicians. It Has A Rhythmic Vocabulary That's Been Used By Rock N' Roll. It's Related To Spirituals, And Even The American Fiddle Tradition.

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.

Commercialism That Has Absolutely No Relationship To Quality Whatsoever, Only Quantitative Assessment Of A Thing.

I Remember When I Wrote A Piece, "blood On The Fields," It Was A While Ago, It Was About Slavery And About Two Characters, And I Studied So Much Of Music, I Would Always Go Back To The Original Documents, And As Much As I Can Get Original Chants And Slave Chants And Different Type Of Beats And Rhythms And Ring Shout.

It's Harder To Build Than Destroy. To Build Is To Engage And Change. In Jazz, We Call Progressing Harmonies Changes. Changes Are Like Obstacles On A Speed Course. They Demand Your Attention And Require You To Be Present. They Are Coming...they Are Here..... And Then They Are Gone. It's How Life Comes. Each Moment Is A Procession From The Future Into The Past And The Sweet Spot Is Always The Present. Live In That Sweet Spot. Be Present.

I'm Just Lucky To Have The Type Of Friends And Musicians And People Dedicated To My Music That I Do.

I Dress Up A Certain Way Because I Respect The Music.

I Grew Up In The South, In New Orleans, Where Guys Torture You All The Time. So I Didn't Really Grow Up On The Self-esteem Campaign. When You Were Lousy At Something, They Told You You Were Lousy, And They Told You How To Fix It.

And My Identity...i Never Really Wondered About It Because, Unfortunately, I Sounded Like Myself. People Be Saying I Sound Like Miles Or Clifford Brown.

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.

What Takes Its Place Is Very Dry Education. And The Tools That Actually Can Teach You - Singing And Playing, Learning How To Participate With Other People, Spiritual Richness - Are Replaced With A Big Emphasis On How To Memorize Things. That's Such An Incomplete Education. Survival Of The Fittest Used To Mean Being Bigger And Stronger.

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.

Trumpet Players Are Just Belligerant, And Cocky, And You Know, Just Hard-headed.

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.

If You Looked Around, You'd Be Glad You Couldn't See.

The Arts Shows That You're Civilized, And It Makes Life Sweet. So You Can Exist And You Can Buy More Things And You Can Be More - We're Dealing With A Form Of Commercialism That Obscures A Prior Relationship To Quality, And It's A National Problem.

When Those Who Are Educated Using Their Education To Exploit Those Who Aren't. That's What The Sub-prime Scandal Represents - People Of Education Using It At The Expense Of Others. At Jazz At Lincoln Center, We Have 22 Educational Programs. Not Just The Word But The Substance Of Education Is Guided By The Arts.

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.

This Music Heals People Because Music Is Vibration, And The Proper Vibration Heals.

Jazz Comes From Our Way Of Life, And Because It's Our National Art Form, It Helps Us To Understand Who We Are.

One Thing About Excellence, It&mac226;s An Exclusive Club. And It&mac226;s Only For Those Who Really Want To Pay Dues To The S--. My Daddy Told Me When I Was A Boy: The Only Way You Can Be Different From Other People Is To Do Some S-- They Don't Want To Do.

When It Comes To Songs And Music, Yeah, People Love To Sing And Dance And Play Music And Tunes, And That Stream Of Consciousness That Exists In Music, Nobody Knows Where That Comes From.

Jazz Music Is America's Past And Its Potential, Summed Up And Sanctified And Accessible To Anybody Who Learns To Listen To, Feel, And Understand It. The Music Can Connect Us To Our Earlier Selves And To Our Better Selves-to-come. It Can Remind Us Of Where We Fit On The Time Line Of Human Achievement, An Ultimate Value Of Art.

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.

Benny Goodman's Band Was Integrated Before Baseball. Even Before It Was Physically Integrated, Music Was Integrated. Everyone Listened To Armstrong And Ellington. The 20s Was Called The Jazz Age. It's Part Of Being American.

Jazz Celebrates Older Generations And Not Just The Youth Movement. When You "sell" Only To People Of A Certain Age, You Get Cut Off From The Main Body Of Experience. The Power Of Couple Dancing And Courtship, It's Elegant, And You Wouldn't Realize America Was Once A Nation Of Dancers And Singers Today. People Of All Races Could Dance And Sing.

Don't Wish For Someone Else To Do Later What You Can Do Now.

My Daddy Expected That My Brothers And I And Our Generation Would Make The World A Better Place. He Had Lived In An America Of Continual Social Progress.

The Nerves Are A Problem On Trumpet, Because When You Mess Up Everyone Can Hear It. Just Remember Most People Are Too Polite To Say Anything About It. That Should Calm Your Nerves.

So When We Spend All Of Our Time Trying To Separate That Which Is Already Joined, It's A Waste Of Time.

The Bandstand Is A Sacred Place.

The Musicians I Respected Were Much Older Than Me. I Expected Them To Cut My Head, And They Did.

He [benny Carter] Is All That Every Jazz Musician The World Over Wants To Be. He's Performed 20,000 Nights. How Many Shoes Have Been Shined? How Much Mascara Put On? Rouge? How Many Of Those Impossible Bowties Have Been Tied? How Many Love Songs Have Been Sung? How Many Dances Have Been Danced? How Many Have Passed To The Sound Of His Music? It's Been Said That A Man Should Not Be Forced To Live Up To His Art. Benny Carter Is One Of The Rare Instances When We Wonder Whether The Great Art That A Man Has Created Can Live Up To Him.

My Older Brother And Myself Always Played Together In Bands, But We Never Knew We Would Be Professional Musicians.

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.

As Long As There Is Democracy, There Will Be People Wanting To Play Jazz Because Nothing Else Will Ever So Perfectly Capture The Democratic Process In Sound. Jazz Means Working Things Out Musically With Other People. You Have To Listen To Other Musicians And Play With Them Even If You Don't Agree With What They're Playing. It Teaches You The Very Opposite Of Racism And Anti-semitism. It Teaches You That The World Is Big Enough To Accommodate Us All.

I Worry More About The Marketing That's Taken Hold Since The 70s. The Jazz Era, The Swing Era, Those Were Huge. Entire Decades Were Named For Music. In The 1940s - After World War Ii - Changes In Taxation, Ballrooms Closing, People Moving To The Suburbs, And The Onset Of Target Marketing And The Confusion Of Commerce With Art Caused Some Things To Happen As A Result That Have Taken Us Away From Jazz And What Jazz Offers Us.

What I Really Have In My Head, My Imagination, My Understanding Of Music, I Never Really Get That Out.

My Mother Always Took My Brothers And Me To Music Lessons. There Were Six Children. Our Parents Attended Our Concerts And Encouraged Us To Study And Enjoy Many Different Types Of Music.

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?

Jazz Is Not The Kind Of Music You Are Going To Learn To Play In Three Or Four Years Or That You Can Just Get Because You Have Some Talent For Music.

Jazz Music Celebrates Life! Human Life; The Range Of It, The Absurdity Of It, The Ignorance Of It, The Greatness Of It, The Intelligence Of It, The Sexuality Of It, The Profundity Of It. And It Deals With It. In All Of Its... It Deals With It!

The People Are Not Coming Because Of Me. They Didn't Come Before Me. It's Because Of A Lack Of Education And Understanding, So It Makes Me More Motivated. It's Like My Mother Said About Having An Artistic Child - She Learned More From Him And He Gets More Attention And More Of The Love, Not Less.

The Duke And Swing Represent Affirmation In The Face Of Adversity.

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