Branford Marsalis Quotes

That's kind of like how jazz is sometimes. You're out there predicting the future, and no one believes you. ~ Branford Marsalis

Pop doesn't really look back. It can't. What makes pop work is simplicity. ~ Branford Marsalis

I haven't heard anything new that I've liked on the show. A lot of the bands we play with are just bad, especially those alternative rock bands. They can do it in the studio but they can't play live... I see the audience applauding while they're playing, and I wonder if it's just because they're fans of the band and don't care, or out of spite. Because it certainly isn't because they sound good.

Branford Marsalis on the musical acts booked on The Tonight Show. ~ Branford Marsalis

A lot of musicians have a tough time hearing what we're doing in a trio format. ~ Branford Marsalis

If you listen to a lot of the songs that are popular now, there's very little melody in there. People love the beat. But to musicians, it's melody, because we understand how elusive it is and how hard it is to hold. ~ Branford Marsalis

You know, being America, being the land of "number ones", everyone wants to be a leader before they follow. ~ Branford Marsalis

I like to make records sound good. I'm more like a reducer than a producer. If an artist cannot produce themselves, what's the point? ~ Branford Marsalis

What is jazz? It, It's almost like asking, What is French? Jazz is a musical language. It's a musical dialect that actually embodies the spirit of America. ~ Branford Marsalis

Jazz fans love Miles and I love him for a myriad of reasons, but the overviews are always too simplistic. ~ Branford Marsalis

The lion's share of what I hear right now are people who, intentional or accidental, have avoided all jazz prior to 1960. And all the musicians who were successful in the '60s spent their entire lives, prior to 1960, listening to all the musicians these people avoid. ~ Branford Marsalis

One of the things that I loved about listening to Miles Davis is that Miles always had an instinct for which musicians were great for what situations. He could always pick a band, and that was the thing that separated him from everybody else. ~ Branford Marsalis

I gave up my base in popular culture when I left the Tonight Show. ~ Branford Marsalis

Everybody talks about finding your voice. Do your homework and your voice will find you. ~ Branford Marsalis

There's a certain kind of motion and pacing that our music has, and this just doesn't have that. We just kind of rushed to the conclusion of most of the songs. I just would've preferred to done them over. ~ Branford Marsalis

Walter Beasley is an anomaly: a successful performing musician who possesses the rare skill of understanding the musical process beyond the intuitive. This special ability enables Walter to communicate with aspiring musicians in a way that removes the sense of mystery that sometimes enshrouds our profession. ~ Branford Marsalis

The whole point is, give me a break with the standards. You go to the average jazz label and suggest a record and they want to know which standards you're going to play. I'm saying let's break the formula. ~ Branford Marsalis

Coltrane came to New Orleans one day and he was talking about the jazz scene. And Coltrane mentions that the problem with jazz was that there were too few groups. ~ Branford Marsalis

We have something that is unique. We have our craft. We have our art. We have our desire. ~ Branford Marsalis

You don't know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything. ~ Branford Marsalis

I think that if you keep banging at the door all you need is a little foothold, a little tiny foothold, and then the rest will take care of itself. ~ Branford Marsalis

I think that one of the problems that jazz has is that it's so incestuous that it's starting to kill itself. ~ Branford Marsalis

I don't care who likes it or buys it. Because if you use that criterion, Mozart would have never written Don Giovanni, Charlie Parker never would have played anything but swing music. There comes a point at which you have to stand up and say, this is what I have to do. ~ Branford Marsalis

There's not one Tin Pan Alley song on my record. ~ Branford Marsalis

So much of Jazz doesn't have an audience other than music students or musicians. ~ Branford Marsalis

If I were like a lot of other people, then it wouldn't be fun; but since I'm like me, it's okay. ~ Branford Marsalis

I'm not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense. ~ Branford Marsalis

It's something that jazz has gotten away from, and it's unfortunate. Players aren't physical anymore. ~ Branford Marsalis

When you're dealing with music without words, titles are more a means of identification than anything else. What's the point of getting lofty? ~ Branford Marsalis

It's hard to get into Newsweek because, as more of our former intellectual magazines take on a pop focus, if there's no buzz, there's no interest. ~ Branford Marsalis

My dad was a musician, it was just what he did, like another guy's dad drives a meat truck. Our house was normal. We weren't taken with the fact our dad was a musician. ~ Branford Marsalis

The way to learn the language is to rip off other players. As Benny Golson told me, "We all start off sounding like other cats. And gradually, a lick here or there,we start to sound like ourselves. But it takes a long time to do so ... " That'swhat he told me, and it worked for me. ~ Branford Marsalis

If you're going to use standards as criteria for signing musicians, you can sign thousands. If you're going to use some sort of conceptual interpretation that's based on the tradition of those standards, but is trying to move away from it, you're down to about 10 people or so. ~ Branford Marsalis

The piano is the X factor. People have a tough time following the structures when there's no piano there, spelling it out. It makes it more easily understood, particularly to people who don't know as much about music. ~ Branford Marsalis

As you get older - for example, in our band we have members of our orchestra, like Carlos Enriquez and Ali Jackson and Walter Blanning. I taught them when they were in high school, and now they teach me.I'll regularly call Ali and say, "Man, can you break this rhythm down for me?" Or Carlos was actually our music director in Cuba, and he's been instrumental in a lot of my education, and I started to develop a saying with them, because they tease me all the time - you get older, you have that familiar relationship - I say, "You have to follow your young leadership, too." ~ Wynton Marsalis

We no longer want to be a melting pot, because we don't understand what is already melted. ~ Wynton Marsalis

When did we begin to lose faith in our ability to effect change? ~ Wynton Marsalis

Those who play for applause ... Tha t's all they get. ~ Wynton Marsalis

I hope it might help players have confidence in our own ways, and not to be afraid of them, as Bernstein showed - things like hoe-downs, fiddle songs, and the art of improvisation, and the New Orleans funeral tradition, and call-and-response church singing, and the fact that the blues run through everything. And in our relationship to European music, in that we don't have to imitate it, it's a part of us, inseparable. ~ Wynton Marsalis

I became a man in New York. New York made me the musician that I am and the person that I am, so it's impossible for me to say I regret having lived there. ~ Wynton Marsalis

No particular music makes me feel nostalgic. If it's great, it just keeps me in the present moment. That level of music is like a classic story, like the Iliad-something so perfect it can never be old. ~ Wynton Marsalis

When it comes to songs and music, yeah, people love to sing and dance and play music and tunes, and that stream of consciousness that exists in music, nobody knows where that comes from. ~ Wynton Marsalis

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? ~ Wynton Marsalis

You can reach a situation where things of intelligence and refinement and culture can be considered elite, and things that are crass and ignorant can be considered to be real and of the people. And when you begin to have the mass of populus striving for something that's not worth striving for, then tremendous amounts of energy go into ... the maintenance of that which is worthless. ~ Wynton Marsalis

It's our job to just do as much as we can to enlighten the people about it and to represent it by playing it with some integrity. That's what I try to do. ~ Wynton Marsalis

At a time when individualism is becoming an endangered species, jazz represents a celebration of the individual. ~ Ellis Marsalis, Jr.

She was the only doctor's wife in Branford, Maine, who hung her wash on an outdoor clothesline instead of putting it through a dryer, because she liked to look out the window and see the clothes blowing in the wind. She had been especially delighted, one day, when one sleeve of the top of her husband's pajamas, prodded by the stiff breeze off the bay, reached over and grabbed her nightgown around the waist. ~ Lois Lowry

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

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. ~ Wynton Marsalis

Certain music, jazz in particular, has the ability to make you a better citizen of the world. It helps you expand your world view and gives you more confidence in your cultural achievements. Improvisational jazz teaches you about yourself while the swing in jazz teaches you how to work with others ~ Wynton Marsalis

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

Milk in a mother's breast-that's cool. Milk in a mouth-that's cool too. But milk in my trumpet? Not so cool. I have to play that thing. ~ Wynton Marsalis

Jazz music is the power of now. ~ Wynton Marsalis

I get so much from having the opportunity to interface with the younger people and to bring information to them and to represent our culture and our way of life. The feeling and the warmth and the love, it's unbelievable. The type of exchange that goes on between students and teachers or visiting people who are doing master classes, and not just when they're musicians. Even general classes, when the students are not necessarily musicians. ~ Wynton Marsalis

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. ~ Wynton Marsalis

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? ~ 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

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

Commercialism that has absolutely no relationship to quality whatsoever, only quantitative assessment of a thing. ~ 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

One thing about excellence, it's an exclusive club. And it'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

Wynton Marsalis' skills have grown as fast as his ambition, and he is the most ambitious younger composer in Jazz. ~ Jon Pareles

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. ~ Wynton Marsalis

In a conversation with the master jazz musician and Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Wynton Marsalis, he told me, "You need to have some restrictions in jazz. Anyone can improvise with no restrictions, but that's not jazz. Jazz always has some restrictions. Otherwise it might sound like noise." The ability to improvise, he said, comes from fundamental knowledge, and this knowledge "limits the choices you can make and will make ~ Sheena Iyengar

Music is the art of all the invisible things that are real. Art, emotion, spiritual essence, consciousness - these things are hard to prove. Music helps you to focus on your sound. We understand that for very young kids. ~ Wynton Marsalis

When those who are educated using their education to exploit those who aren't. That's what the sub-prime scandal represents - people of education using it at the expense of others. At Jazz at Lincoln Center, we have 22 educational programs. Not just the word but the substance of education is guided by the arts. ~ Wynton Marsalis

We all teach from that same frame of reference. We're like neighborhood - the people who have had the opportunity through this music to gain a platform and spread the message of this music, which is basically love in a form of communication that's honest and truthful. ~ Wynton Marsalis

I think that when the education system started to be dismantled during the first Great Depression in the 1930s, we didn't recover from that. ~ Wynton Marsalis

It's really not a stretch. The checks and balances are the same. The drums are the executive branch. The jazz orchestra is the legislative branch. Logic and reason are like jazz solos. The bass player is the judicial branch. One our greatest ever is Milt Hinton, and his nickname is "The Judge." ~ Wynton Marsalis

When I say "our," I definitely mean all of America. It's not less pertinent for you because it comes from a Black person, just like a great achievement by an Anglo American is less important. ~ Wynton Marsalis

Humility is the doorway 2 truth & clarity of objectives ... it's the doorway 2 learning. ~ Wynton Marsalis

We learn a language through its song, and even if you don't have music you have the song of people you love's voice, and you'll notice that song in their voice. ~ Wynton Marsalis

There's always the cliche of the choir shouting and clapping. OK, you have to do that, but there's also introspective parts, parts where you just follow someone that's preaching. There's lots of different emotions and moods that a service requires. ~ Wynton Marsalis

I noticed that religion gave some people a way to escape dealing with the world: "Things will be better when you die," the people of my grandma's generation said as they worked themselves to death. "God wants you to forgive and love those who do you wrong," some people said to shake off the shame of being unable to respond to the abuse they endured. The holier-than-thou faction found comfort in believing, "The rest of y'all are lost because you don't have a personal relationship with God - our God."
But art engages you in the world, not just the world around you but the big world, and not just the big world of Tokyo and Sydney and Johannesburg, but the bigger world of ideas and concepts and feelings of history and humanity. ~ Wynton Marsalis

This is our bandstand. If you don't want to play, get up off the instrument and leave. ~ Wynton Marsalis

It's hard to be prejudiced against someone you love. ~ Wynton Marsalis

Let the critics criticize and let the doers do. ~ Wynton Marsalis

If you're not making mistakes, you're not trying. ~ Wynton Marsalis

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