Music with Ease > Jazz Quotes > Wynton Marsalis Quotes

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"The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel."
-- Wynton Marsalis (attributed)

"Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity."
-- Wynton Marsalis (attributed)

"I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice."
-- Wynton Marsalis (attributed)

"One thing about excellence, it&Mac226;s an exclusive club. And it&Mac226;s only for those who really want to pay dues to the s---. My daddy told me when I was a boy: The only way you can be different from other people is to do some s--- they don't want to do."
-- Wynton Marsalis (attributed)

"The reason why the music [jazz] is important is because it's an art form—an ancient art form—that takes in the mythology of our people."
-- Wynton Marsalis (attributed)

"As long as there is democracy, there will be people wanting to play jazz because nothing else will ever so perfectly capture the democratic process in sound. Jazz means working things out musically with other people. You have to listen to other musicians and play with them even if you don't agree with what they're playing. It teaches you the very opposite of racism and anti-Semitism. It teaches you that the world is big enough to accommodate us all."
-- Wynton Marsalis (attributed)

"They take your drawers off for you, they show your ass, they sell bulls---, they call themselves 'niggaz' and the women 'bitches' and 'hos' and it's fine with everybody. That's what the essence of decadence is."
-- Wynton Marsalis (attributed) on rap and hip hip

"Wynton Marsalis' skills have grown as fast as his ambition, and he is the most ambitious younger composer in Jazz."
-- Jon Pareles, "Review/Jazz: Wynton Marsalis Takes a Long Look at Slavery," New York Times (4 April 1994):C-13.





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Author: David Paul Wagner
(David Paul Wagner on Google+)