Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.
BRANFORD MARSALISI’m not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.
More Branford Marsalis Quotes
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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 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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When people go to concerts, they say I’m going to see… not, I’m going to hear.
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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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My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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I’m not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.
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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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