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 MARSALISPop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.
More Branford Marsalis Quotes
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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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When people go to concerts, they say I’m going to see… not, I’m going to hear.
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My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.
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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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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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Walter Beasley is an anomaly: a successful performing musician who possesses the rare skill of understanding the musical process beyond the intuitive. T
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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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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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If it’s not going to sound like Terrapin Station, what’s the point of playing Terrapin Station?
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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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I’m not going to play funk licks on a jazz album. That makes no sense.
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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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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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You hear it in your brain. Whatever makes sense. Some songs work well as quartet songs, sometimes they don’t.
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his special ability enables Walter to communicate with aspiring musicians in a way that removes the sense of mystery that sometimes enshrouds our profession.
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