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" 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. "

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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. "

Wynton Marsalis

Identity

Love

Run

" The young very seldom lead anything in our country today. It's been quite some time since a younger generation pushed an older one to a higher standard. "

" What I've learned how to do as I've gotten older is to take all of the information that I have, and push it aside, and try to distill each song into an emotional theme. The hardest thing that I've ever had to learn how to do in playing music is use the sound of my instrument to create an emotional effect. "

" 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

See

Ready

" My father is a jazz musician, so I grew up hearing jazz. My parents loved it, but I didn't like it. It went on for too long. Yes, I had certain teachers that really inspired me, like Danny Barker, and John Longo. And I had no idea that I would have any impact on jazz. "

Wynton Marsalis

Long

Parents

" There's so much spirit of integration and democracy in jazz. "

" 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. "

" I have absolutely no idea what my generation did to enrich our democracy. We dropped the ball. We entered a period of complacency and closed our eyes to the public corruption of our democracy. "

" Even in these times, there are still neighbors that will turn their backs on neighbors. "

" I didn't have a philosophical understanding of music until I came to New York. I didn't understand how it applied to my kind and my generation. I thought it was just old people talking. "

" Maybe the preoccupation with technological progress has overshadowed our concern with human progress. "

" 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 musicians I respected were much older than me. I expected them to cut my head, and they did. "

Wynton Marsalis

Than

Older

" It's important to address young people in the reopening of New Orleans. In rebuilding, let's revisit the potential of American democracy and American glory. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Don't wish for someone else to do later what you can do now. "

" I'm not a person who writes really abstract things with oblique references. I look at abstraction like I look at condiments. Give me some Tabasco sauce, some ketchup, some mayonnaise. I love all of that. Put it on a trumpet. I've just got to have the ketchup and Tabasco sauce. That's my attitude about musical philosophy. "

Wynton Marsalis

Look

Love

" I generally work right up to when I have to do something - I'm always doing a lot. "

Wynton Marsalis

Doing

Lot

" What I really have in my head, my imagination, my understanding of music, I never really get that out. "

" The first time I ever played the trumpet in public, I played the Marine Hymn. I sounded terrible. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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? "

" I'm not afraid of you being yourself. That's America. "

" 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. "

" Thank the good Lord for a job. "

" Don't settle for style. Succeed in substance. "

" My older brother and myself always played together in bands, but we never knew we would be professional musicians. "

" We looked up to our father. He still is much greater than us. "

Wynton Marsalis

Father

Still