I feel like a lot of the fundamental material, I've assimilated. So now the question is: Am I going to really get into my spiritual inheritance of music and really develop my abilities?
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of embracing and developing one's natural talents and spiritual connection to art, particularly music.
Wynton Marsalis reflects on the idea that while he has absorbed a lot of fundamental knowledge and skills in music, the true challenge lies in consciously engaging with his artistic heritage and dedicatedly developing his musical abilities. This highlights the journey of an artist who must decide to not only learn but also to deeply explore and express their unique artistic identity.
In practice
This quote can be used during a speech at a music school graduation to inspire students to pursue their artistic paths.
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.
To you I am neither man nor woman. I come before you as an author only.
It is always hard for poets to believe that one says their poems are bad not because one is a fiend but because their poems are bad.
Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don't want it.
Radio... force-feeds us music... everywhere and all the time... sewage-water music in which music is dying.
We're a very expensive group; we break a lot of rules. It's unheard of to combine opera with a rock theme, my dear .
You should look straight at a film; that's the only way to see one. Film is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.
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