The only justification for looking down on anyone is that you're going to stop and pick them up. Wynton Marsalis More Quotes by Wynton Marsalis More Quotes From Wynton Marsalis When did we begin to lose faith in our ability to effect change? Wynton Marsalis effectsabilityloses There really have only ever been a few people in each generation who step out, are willing to put themselves on the line, and risk everything for their beliefs. Wynton Marsalis generationsriskpeople My older brother and myself always played together in bands, but we never knew we would be professional musicians. Wynton Marsalis musicianbrothertogether 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 runningsongart This is our bandstand. If you don't want to play, get up off the instrument and leave. Wynton Marsalis jazzwantplay Some stances are just conducive to swinging. If I stand up straight for too long it's harder to swing. Plus my feet hurt. Wynton Marsalis swingshurtfeet 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. Wynton Marsalis jobscountrybook 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 inheritancespiritualfundamentals 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 daddyboyspeople You need a team. You need people to push you. You need opponents. Wynton Marsalis teampeopleneeds I didn't have a philosophical understanding of music until I came to New York. I didn't understand how it applied to my kind and my generation. I thought it was just old people talking. Wynton Marsalis philosophicalnew-yorktalking Don't worry about what others say about your music. Pursue whatever you are hearing... but if everybody really hates your music maybe you could try some different approaches. Wynton Marsalis hateworrytrying 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 marijuanagenerationscountry 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. Wynton Marsalis our-generationbrotheramerica Don't bullshit' just play. Wynton Marsalis bullshitjazzplay 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 integrityjobspeople We started to confuse entertainment with art, because art has a component of entertainment. It has to have that or it becomes too boring. It becomes too lost in its own devices. But I just think that we started to lose, and even before that, it's not necessary. Wynton Marsalis entertainmentartthinking The arts shows that you're civilized, and it makes life sweet. So you can exist and you can buy more things and you can be more - we're dealing with a form of commercialism that obscures a prior relationship to quality, and it's a national problem. Wynton Marsalis qualitysweetart We don't have the leadership or the understanding of the value of this, and when your political systems and your economic systems start to fail, it's only a cultural understanding that allows you to reconstruct them and to get back to who you are. For some reason, it hasn't dawned on us yet. Wynton Marsalis failingpoliticalunderstanding The people are not coming because of me. They didn't come before me. It's because of a lack of education and understanding, so it makes me more motivated. It's like my mother said about having an artistic child - she learned more from him and he gets more attention and more of the love, not less. Wynton Marsalis motherchildrenpeople
