The history of jazz lets us know that this period in our history is not the only period we've come through together. If we truly understood the history of our national arts, we'd know that we have mutual aspirations, a shared history, in good times and bad.
Interpretation
Jazz reflects our shared history and collective aspirations as a society.
Wynton Marsalis highlights that the evolution of jazz music is a testament to the shared experiences and aspirations that have united people throughout history. By understanding the roots and developments of national arts like jazz, we recognize that we have gone through various challenges and triumphs together, emphasizing a sense of unity and mutual understanding across different times and struggles.
In practice
During a speech at a cultural event, one might reference this quote to emphasize the importance of shared artistic traditions in building community.
Swing is extreme coordination. It's a maintaining balance, equilibrium. It's about executing very difficult rhythms with a panache and a feeling in the context of very strict time. So, everything about the swing is about some guideline and some grid and the elegant way that you negotiate your way through that grid.
Many of our greatest musicians abandoned all of their aesthetic objectives to try to become pertinent. And, at the end of the day, they never became pop stars. I counter stated that very strongly, and I continue to do that.
Jazz music is the power of now. There is no script. It's conversation. The emotion is given to you by musicians as they make split-second decisions to fulfill what they feel the moment requires.
The blues. It runs through all American music. Somebody bending the note. The other is the two-beat groove. It's in New Orleans music, it's in jazz, it's in country music, it's in gospel.
In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any language, has its own grammer and vocabulary. There's no right or wrong, just some choices that are better than others.
My daddy thought - no, he expected - that my brothers and I and our generation would make the world a better place. He was correct in his belief because he had lived in an America of continual social progress, depression followed by prosperity, segregation by integration, and so on.
The art of bread making can become a consuming hobby, and no matter how often and how many kinds of bread one has made, there always seems to be something new to learn.
If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer.
The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces.
I enjoy the speed of fashion. I love doing different things and I think I still have something valid to say in fashion.
The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don't think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.
I don't paint nature. I am nature.
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