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.
Interpretation
The quote reflects a realization of the deeper significance of music and its connection to one's cultural identity.
Wynton Marsalis conveys how his move to New York led to a newfound appreciation and understanding of music as not just an art form, but as a profound reflection of the experiences and perspectives of his generation. Initially dismissive, he grew to recognize music's relevance to his identity and its broader philosophical implications.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of arts education, you could cite this quote to emphasize the relevance of music to youth identity.
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.
Many of our greatest musicians abandoned all of their aesthetic objectives to try to become pertinent. And, at the end of the day, they never became pop stars. I counter stated that very strongly, and I continue to do that.
Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It's conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as they make split-second decisions to fulfill what they feel the moment requires.
The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.
In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There's no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others.
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.
If I'm inspired to make a certain kind of song, I'm going to make that kind of song, no matter if it's what they know me as or think I am.
When you write, you want to get rid of the world, don’t you? Of course you do. When you’re writing, you’re creating your own worlds.
I believe in creative control. No matter what anyone makes, they should have control over it.
In the future, you won't buy artists' works; you'll buy software that makes original pieces of 'their' works, or that recreates their way of looking at things. You could buy a Shostakovich box, or you could buy a Brahms box. You might want some Shostakovich slow-movement-like music to be generated. So then you use that box.
I feel like everything we do comes down to how it looks. Even no branding is branding. For example, you had no face or image to put to my music at first. That was branding.
I think writers need windows on a view to remind them that a whole world is out there, not the minutiae with which they might be dealing on a close scale
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