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" I sounded like myself. People be saying I sound like Miles or Clifford Brown. "

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

" I grew up in the South, and our way of dealing with each other was teasing, ribbing, making fun and scrapping in the street. Criticism doesn't bother me so much. It actually made me, when I was younger, more aggressive. But you get into middle age, and you lose interest in that stuff. It's not serious. "

Wynton Marsalis

" The heart of a music is its rhythm. The heart of rhythm section music is the rhythm. "

Wynton Marsalis

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

Wynton Marsalis

" 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

" We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation. "

Wynton Marsalis

" 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. "

Wynton Marsalis

" 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. "

Wynton Marsalis

" 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

" 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

" 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? "

Wynton Marsalis

" The bandstand is a sacred place. "

Wynton Marsalis

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

Wynton Marsalis

" 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. "

Wynton Marsalis

" The rebuilding of New Orleans is an important point in the history of the United States. "

Wynton Marsalis

" 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. "

Wynton Marsalis

" 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. "

Wynton Marsalis

" 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

" Don't worry about what others say about your music. Pursue whatever you are hearing... but if everybody really hates your music maybe you could try some different approaches. "

Wynton Marsalis

" My schedule is always tight. But I like to have the pressure of having to finish doing something; it gives me an added edge. "

Wynton Marsalis

" 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. "

Wynton Marsalis

" 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

" 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?' "

Wynton Marsalis

" I became a man in New York. New York made me the musician that I am and the person that I am, so it's impossible for me to say I regret having lived there. "

Wynton Marsalis

" 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. "

Wynton Marsalis

" 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. "

Wynton Marsalis

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

Wynton Marsalis

" 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. "

Wynton Marsalis

" I didn't want to get that ring around my lips from practicing the trumpet, because I thought the girls wouldn't like me. So I never practiced. "

Wynton Marsalis

" 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. "

Wynton Marsalis