Song Quotes by Wynton Marsalis

A musician's whole life is to listen.

— Wynton Marsalis

Jazz is democracy in music.

— Wynton Marsalis

Jazz music is the power of now.

— Wynton Marsalis

Jazz music creates so many phenomenal figures.

— Wynton Marsalis

The heart of a music is its rhythm. The heart of rhythm section music is the rhythm.

— Wynton Marsalis

Music is always for the listener, but the first listener is always the musician

— Wynton Marsalis

There's so much spirit of integration and democracy in jazz.

— Wynton Marsalis

Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.

— Wynton Marsalis

This music heals people because music is vibration, and the proper vibration heals.

— Wynton Marsalis

I wanted to make somebody feel like Coltrane made me feel, listening to it.

— Wynton Marsalis

Louis Armstrong is jazz. He represents what the music is all about.

— Wynton Marsalis

I'm just lucky to have the type of friends and musicians and people dedicated to my music that I do.

— Wynton Marsalis

We learn a language through its song, and even if you don't have music you have the song of people you love's…

— Wynton Marsalis

When I was 12, I began listening to John Coltrane and I developed a love for jazz, which I still have more…

— Wynton Marsalis

There's the tradition in jazz of having the Battle of the Bands, and you do not want to get your head cut…

— Wynton Marsalis

When it comes to songs and music, yeah, people love to sing and dance and play music and tunes, and that stream…

— Wynton Marsalis

Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It's conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as…

— Wynton Marsalis

Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.

— Wynton Marsalis

My mother always took my brothers and me to music lessons. There were six children. Our parents attended our concerts and encouraged…

— Wynton Marsalis

Duke Ellington always had a style: original, clean with interesting color combinations. He had an artist's eye.

— Wynton Marsalis

I hope it might help players have confidence in our own ways, and not to be afraid of them, as Bernstein showed…

— Wynton Marsalis

Jazz celebrates older generations and not just the youth movement. When you "sell" only to people of a certain age, you get…

— Wynton Marsalis

I think that the blues is in everything, so it's not possible to neglect it. You hear somebody go 'Ooh ooh oooh,'…

— Wynton Marsalis

When I came to New York, to Brooklyn, I met Alvin Ailey and Stanley Crouch and August Wilson. They were always putting…

— Wynton Marsalis

We all teach from that same frame of reference. We're like neighborhood - the people who have had the opportunity through this…

— Wynton Marsalis

My father is a jazz musician, so I grew up hearing jazz. My parents loved it, but I didn't like it. It…

— Wynton Marsalis

What I've learned how to do as I've gotten older is to take all of the information that I have, and push…

— Wynton Marsalis

If you didn't have the amalgam of Blacks and African-type sensibility and European sensibility, you wouldn't have jazz. Even in the negative…

— Wynton Marsalis

“Today you go into make a modern recording with all this technology. The bass plays first, then the drums come in later,…

— Wynton Marsalis

He [Benny Carter] is all that every jazz musician the world over wants to be. He's performed 20,000 nights. How many shoes…

— Wynton Marsalis

“And the thing about jazz, through all the business involved in practicing and improvement, it's always sweet: the improvement that you notice…

— Wynton Marsalis

It's harder to build than destroy. To build is to engage and change. In jazz, we call progressing harmonies changes. Changes are…

— Wynton Marsalis

As long as there is democracy, there will be people wanting to play jazz because nothing else will ever so perfectly capture…

— Wynton Marsalis

“The thing in jazz that will get Bix Beiderbecke out of his bed at two o’clock in the morning, pick that cornet…

— Wynton Marsalis

Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music…

— Wynton Marsalis

Grace Kelly plays with intelligence, wit and feeling. She has a great amount of natural ability and the ability to adapt. That…

— Wynton Marsalis

Jazz is not just 'Well, man, this is what I feel like playing.' It's a very structured thing that comes down from…

— Wynton Marsalis

In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and…

— Wynton Marsalis

When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great…

— Wynton Marsalis

Through improvisation, jazz teaches you about yourself. And through swing, it teaches you that other people are individuals too. It teaches you…

— Wynton Marsalis