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 MARSALISSo much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.
More Branford Marsalis Quotes
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The biggest problem with American music right now, is that kids don’t listen. They come by it honestly, Americans don’t listen anyway.
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If it’s not going to sound like Terrapin Station, what’s the point of playing Terrapin Station?
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One of the things that’s clear to me from interviews that I’ve read is that the more popular successful jazz musicians had audiences above and beyond the music community.
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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.
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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.
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You know, being America, being the land of “number ones”, everyone wants to be a leader before they follow.
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My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.
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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.
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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.
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Humans are imperfect. That’s one of the reasons that classical and jazz are in trouble. We’re on the quest for the perfect performance and every note has to be right. Man, every note is not right in life.
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When people go to concerts, they say I’m going to see… not, I’m going to hear.
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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.
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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?
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What you have to do is play a couple of songs and then get off the stage because everything that trails it sounds stupid.
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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.
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