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" 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. "

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" 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

Age

Body

Experience

" 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. "

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

" Whenever you face a man who's playing your instrument, there's a competition. "

" 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 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. "

" 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. "

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

Wynton Marsalis

Treat

Play

" 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? "

" Many a revolution started with the actions of a few. Only 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence. A few hanging together can lead a nation to change. "

" 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. "

" When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more and more each year. "

Wynton Marsalis

Year

Jazz

" Through improvisation, jazz teaches you about yourself. And through swing, it teaches you that other people are individuals too. It teaches you how to coordinate with them. "

" 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. "

" The majority of the high schools and the public schools in N.Y.C. don't even have band programs. Hip-hop in a lot of ways is an outgrowth of a lack of instruments and a desire to play music, so we can't really fault the kids for that. "

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

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

" Only a few act - the rest of us reap the benefits of their risk. "

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

" 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. "

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

" The main three components are the blues, improvisation - which is some kind of element that people are trying to make it up - and swing, which means even though they're making up music, they're trying to make it up together. It feels great, like you're having a great conversation with somebody. "

" 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

People

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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?' "

" When you create change with your point of view, you have to be ready for what comes with that. "

" I'm just lucky to have the type of friends and musicians and people dedicated to my music that I do. "

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