Wynton Marsalis

Wynton Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American trumpeter and composer. He has also worked in classical music.

Quotes

The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel.
- As quoted by Mike Joyce, "Wynton Marsalis" (Apr 7, 1998) The Washington Post.

Some stances are just conducive to swinging. If I stand up straight for too long it's harder to swing. Plus my feet hurt.
- Quotable Jazz (2002) compiled & edited by Marshall Bowden, p. 49. Also see Wynton on cornet @TrumpetHerald.com.

They take your drawers off for you, they show your ass, they sell bullshit, they call themselves 'niggaz' and the women 'bitches' and 'hos' and it's fine with everybody. ...That's what the essence of decadence is. Civilisation is an effort.
- Inveighing against rap and hip-hop record companies in "Wynton Marsalis: Miles Davis? He was a rock star" (Jan 11 2003) The Independent

", an Essay-Interview Written on the Occasion of the Premiere of Blood on the Fields" As quoted in Ted Panken interview @WordPress.com.

I had a trumpet, but I didn't want to be a trumpet player. I wanted to be some type of athlete or in some type of scholarly activity, be a chemist or something―I had my little chemistry set, and I liked playing with it.

I always believed in working hard. ...That’s something that my father and my great-uncle would always tell me. My great-uncle was a stone-cutter for the cemetery, and he was in his nineties. He would always say, "Learn how to work a job. Your job is your identity. You don’t work a job for somebody else. You work your job for yourself."
So when I got to be serious about music, I started practicing, and trying to look for teachers.

I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice.

That's democratic leadership. It's like a flock of geese. They make the calls from the back. ...If you really are leading, everybody is leading. ...Chris Crenshaw ...started to tell me, from the last two songs, who hadn't played. ...So then we all started to look out for each other. ...Then we start to negotiate the song so that we make sure everyone plays.

The level of corruption we're seeing now... I'm a nonpartisan attacker of the corruption I see. I've been doing it for 40 years, and what you're seeing in the public space now is the type of arrogance and criminal activity that we were always working our way towards. Now you see it. ...[H]ow do the people at large respond to this? ...The judicial system is not saving us the way it should. ...[W]e have to wake up and say "we're tired of this..." And... if we don't, we're going to be just like all the other things that could've been something.

[I]n jazz you can plug the base amp in, the drummer can play loud, one soloist can play 400 choruses, and the next one can fight by playing 430. The music breaks down. You have to balance your freedom to improvise with restraint that comes with swinging and recognizing other people. Democracy dies when you do not understand the need for leveling, and to create wealth for everybody, and to see in your neighbor not an enemy, but a friend, and for elites to manage themselves.

That's what I have to say as a band leader. I can't say, "Well, I'm going to solo on every tune. Every time somebody plays it's me." That's not the solution.

[W]e're in trouble right now, but... a doctor doesn't go into a place where a lot of people are sick and say, "Man, a lot of people are sick here." You're the doctor, man! Come in and help people. So let's roll up our sleeves. A lot of talking always goes on about democracy. Let's see! ...I'm the doctor of democracy. Let's go!

I'm writing my 5th symphony. It's called the Liberty Symphony. ...It will be rah, rah optimism, but it will also be movements like, "This you did, despite the word of the Lord." ...I take all this very seriously.

The reason why the music is important is that it's an art form—an ancient art form—that takes in the mythology of our people.

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' 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," The New York Times (4 April 1994) C-13.

How you feel about Wynton Marsalis may indicate how you feel about jazz. To some fans he’s been a kind of saviour, restoring the music’s essence by reconnecting it to its roots in blues and swing, after its post-1960s fragmentation into fusion, free, world, acid, smooth, etc. But to others, his neo-conservatism is actually anti-jazz, restricting its evolutionary energy and creating ‘mausoleum music’. But no one doubts Marsalis’s authority, sincerity and talent. His virtuosity made him famous when he was barely out of his teens, achieving the unprecedented feat of winning Grammy awards in both classical and jazz categories in the same year. In fact, his passion for the trumpet first led him to jazz. Growing up in New Orleans in the 1970s, Marsalis was a mere dabbler in funk until his classical trumpet teacher introduced him to such jazz masters as Clifford Brown. His imagination was fired by a music that combined individuality and virtuosity, forged in African-American experience. That devotion to the heritage and expressive power of jazz still informs everything Marsalis does. It’s why he has fiercely decried the sort of all-purpose dumbing down which, to him, misrepresents the legacy of such African-American heroes as Armstrong, Ellington and Monk. As the trumpeter berated a critic: ‘We are not some hip sub-culture for your entertainment. Jazz is the most intelligent music of all time.’
- Geoffrey Smith of BBC Music (March 19, 2024) [1]

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