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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of understanding the cultural significance of music in education.
Wynton Marsalis reflects on the necessity of teaching the meanings behind music to the younger generations, suggesting that music plays a crucial role in shaping cultural identity and understanding. He points out that without properly conveying the depth and history of music, we miss an essential part of our cultural heritage that helps define who we are as individuals and communities.
In practice
This quote can be used in an educational seminar to stress the need for a music curriculum that addresses cultural meanings.
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.
There is nothing obscure about the objectives of educational exchange. Its purpose is to acquaint Americans with the world as it is and to acquaint students and scholars from many lands with America as it is-not as we wish it were or as we might wish foreigners to see it, but exactly as it is-which by my reckoning is an "image" of which no American need be ashamed.
Although I'm not actually embarrassed by this, I tend not to read books that have awesome movies made from them, regardless of how well or badly the movie represented the actual written story.
Persistent questioning and healthy inquisitiveness are the first requisite for acquiring learning of any kind.
I think I would abolish schools which systematically inculcate sectarian beliefs.
I think people who write for kids, we have that ability to go back into our own lives.
We are all born with the power of speech, but we need grammar. Conscience, too, needs Revelation.
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