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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.

Branford Marsalis

Everybody talks about finding your voice. Do your homework and your voice will find you.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Findings Homework Voice
Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.
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Looks Music Simplicity
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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Artist Records Sound
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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Cat Player Rip
You don’t know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Jazz Music Order
The piano is the X factor. People have a tough time following the structures when there’s no piano there, spelling it out. It makes it more easily understood, particularly to people who don’t know as much about music.
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People Piano Times Tough
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.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Average Giving Play
Walter Beasley is an anomaly: a successful performing musician who possesses the rare skill of understanding the musical process beyond the intuitive. T
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Skills Successful Understanding
I don’t care who likes it or buys it. Because if you use that criterion, Mozart would have never written Don Giovanni, Charlie Parker never would have played anything but swing music. There comes a point at which you have to stand up and say, this is what I have to do.
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Care Swings Use
If I were like a lot of other people, then it wouldn’t be fun; but since I’m like me, it’s okay.
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Fun Okay People
You know, being America, being the land of “number ones”, everyone wants to be a leader before they follow.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Country Land Numbers
So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.
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Jazz Music Students
When you’re dealing with music without words, titles are more a means of identification than anything else. What’s the point of getting lofty?
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Identification Mean Titles
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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Community Halloween Successful
When people go to concerts, they say I’m going to see… not, I’m going to hear.
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Concert Going People
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.
BRANFORD MARSALIS

Band Listening Musician

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Branford Marsalis Quotes