Jazz comes from our way of life, and because it's our national art form, it helps us to understand who we are.
Interpretation
Jazz symbolizes the American experience and reflects our identity and culture.
Wynton Marsalis highlights that jazz music is deeply rooted in the American experience, representing not only a unique art form but also serving as a mirror to our societal values and identity. It illustrates how this genre can convey our collective stories, struggles, and triumphs, allowing us to gain insight into who we are as a nation.
In practice
Use this quote in a presentation about the cultural significance of jazz in America.
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.
Do not feel safe. The poet remembers._x000D_ You can kill one, but another is born._x000D_ The words are written down, the deed, the date.
The actor has to develop his body. The actor has to work on his voice. But the most important thing the actor has to work on is his mind.
Everyone is not able, or inclined, to write poetry in the narrower sense any more than everyone is qualified to take part in a walking race. But just as all of us can and do walk, so all of us can and do use language poetically.
I still feel that French cooking is the most important in the world, one of the few that has rules. If you follow the rules, you can do pretty well.
Ah, music, sacred tongue of God! I hear thee calling and I come.
People will never understand the patience a photographer requires to make a great photograph, all they see is the end result. I can stand in front of a leaf with a dew drop, or a rain drop, and stay there for ages just waiting for the right moment. Sure, people think I'm crazy, but who cares? I see more than they do!
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