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" 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. "

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" 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

Information

Create

Song

" 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. "

" 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. "

" It was Dr. King's tireless activism that fostered our modern way of relating to one another. "

" 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

Never

Lips

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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? "

" 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?' "

" I feel like a lot of the fundamental material, I've assimilated. So now the question is: Am I going to really get into my spiritual inheritance of music and really develop my abilities? "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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

" As a jazz musician, you have individual power to create the sound. You also have a responsibility to function in the context of other people who have that power also. "

" 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. "

" 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

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

" Ethics are more important than laws. "

Wynton Marsalis

Than

Laws

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

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

Wynton Marsalis

Than

Older

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

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

" 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. "