Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" If you are serious about American culture and you are serious about Afro-American culture, you are in a lot of pain. You are not - you are not smiling about it. "

Wynton Marsalis

You

Culture

Pain

Related Quotes:

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

Wynton Marsalis

Father

Still

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You need a team. You need people to push you. You need opponents. "

" 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 believe in professionalism, but playing is not like a job. You have to be grateful to have the opportunity to play. "

" 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. "

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

" Ethics are more important than laws. "

Wynton Marsalis

Than

Laws

" I almost never watch TV, except for '60 Minutes' and pro football. I love Drew Brees, the Manning brothers and the Steelers' linebackers. "

Wynton Marsalis

Watch

Never

" 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. "

" I feel that for years of teaching in the country and reading criticism in books, I feel like the things most needed in our culture are the understanding of the meanings of our music. We haven't done that good of job teaching our kids what our music means or how we developed our taste in music that reminds us and teaches us who we are. "

" I believed in studying just because I knew education was a privilege. It was the discipline of study, to get into the habit of doing something that you don't want to do. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

Jazz

Time

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

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

" When did we begin to lose faith in our ability to effect change? "

" I have friends who will critique me much harder than any review. "

" 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. "

" Musicians like to converse. There's always interesting conversation with musicians - with classical musicians, with jazz musicians, musicians in general. "

" Through first-class education, a generation marches down the long uncertain road of the future with confidence. "

" 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. "

" I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it. "

Wynton Marsalis

Somebody

Feel

" I dress up a certain way because I respect the music. "

Wynton Marsalis

Music

Respect

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

" Duke Ellington always had a style: original, clean with interesting color combinations. He had an artist's eye. "

" 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 think that the blues is in everything, so it's not possible to neglect it. You hear somebody go 'Ooh ooh oooh,' and that's the blues. You hear a rock n' roll song. That's the blues. Somebody playing a guitar solo? They're playing the blues. "