So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.
BRANFORD MARSALISWhen you’re dealing with music without words, titles are more a means of identification than anything else. What’s the point of getting lofty?
More Branford Marsalis Quotes
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My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.
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You don’t know what you like, you like what you know. In order to know what you like, you have to know everything.
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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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I think that if you keep banging at the door all you need is a little foothold, a little tiny foothold, and then the rest will take care of itself.
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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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You know, being America, being the land of “number ones”, everyone wants to be a leader before they follow.
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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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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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It’s hard to get into Newsweek because, as more of our former intellectual magazines take on a pop focus, if there’s no buzz, there’s no interest.
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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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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’m not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.
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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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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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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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