I became a man in New York. New York made me the musician that I am and the person that I am, so it's impossible for me to say I regret having lived there.
Interpretation
This quote reflects deep appreciation for New York's impact on personal and professional growth.
In this quote, Wynton Marsalis emphasizes the significant role that New York City has played in shaping both his identity as a musician and as an individual. He conveys a sense of gratitude for the experiences and transformations he underwent in the city, indicating that the challenges and opportunities he faced there were integral to his development, leading him to assert that he has no regrets about living there.
In practice
During a speech at a music conference, I quoted Marsalis to highlight the influence of environment on creativity.
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.
Everybody just wants to appreciate time as it's passing, to be in the moment. It's the hardest thing to do. You're either in the unknown future that you're working toward, or you're in the past that becomes a little abstract.
There are people looking for exactly what you have to offer, and you are being brought together on the checkerboard of life.
It was like a church in there as only the truly lost sit in bars on Tuesday mornings at 8:00 a.m.
You're nobody 'til somebody kills you.
I just love asking questions. I love people. It's in my DNA. I'm cursed - and blessed.
As you travel though life, offer good wishes to each being you meet.
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