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" Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures. "

Wynton Marsalis

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" 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. "

Wynton Marsalis

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

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" 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. "

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

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 settle for style. Succeed in substance. "

Wynton Marsalis

" Generally, when I wake up in the morning I set out a series of problems for myself and I write them down, and when I'm sleeping, my mind solves the problems. When I wake up in the morning, I have more clarity on the issue. "

Wynton Marsalis

" In the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra we play such a diversity of music, with 10 arrangers in the band, we don't really worry about whether it's contemporary or not. "

Wynton Marsalis

" Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are. "

Wynton Marsalis

" Ethics are more important than laws. "

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

" 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

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

Wynton Marsalis

" I play piano and drums very poorly and French horn and tuba all equally as bad. "

Wynton Marsalis

" 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

" 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

" 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. "

Wynton Marsalis

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

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

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

Wynton Marsalis

" There is an idea that a mind is wasted on the arts unless it makes you good in math or science. There is some evidence that the arts might help you in math and science. "

Wynton Marsalis

" 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

" 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

" 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

" When I first came to New York everybody on the scene would treat me like I could play, but I couldn't. "

Wynton Marsalis

" 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. "

Wynton Marsalis

" My daddy thought - no, he expected - that my brothers and I and our generation would make the world a better place. He was correct in his belief because he had lived in an America of continual social progress, depression followed by prosperity, segregation by integration, and so on. "

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

" 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

" A musician's whole life is to listen. "

Wynton Marsalis