New Orleans - the real New Orleans - is the soul of the country.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that New Orleans embodies the true essence of American culture.
Wynton Marsalis articulates the idea that New Orleans is not just a city but a cultural and spiritual heartbeat of the United States. Its unique blend of music, history, and traditions reflects the complexities and richness of American identity, making it a core part of the nationβs soul and character.
In practice
During a discussion about American cities, one might say this quote to emphasize the cultural significance of New Orleans.
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.
Where belief is painful we are slow to believe.
Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.
The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.
Viva Las Vegas with your neon flashin' and your one arm bandits crashin' all those hopes down the drain. Viva Las Vegas turnin' day into nighttime, turnin night into daytime. If you see it once, you'll never be the same again.
Reality is not always probable, or likely.
Man has his future within him, dynamically alive at this present moment.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.