New Orleans had a great tradition of celebration. Opera, military marching bands, folk music, the blues, different types of church music, ragtime, echoes of traditional African drumming, and all of the dance styles that went with this music could be heard and seen throughout the city. When all of these kinds of music blended into one, jazz was born.
Wynton MarsalisWhen you study our greatest artists, you will find that they give us a key to understand how to deal with each other, and that our bloodlines are intertwined. It's not hyphenated America. That there is an America, and it is expressed in those arts. It gives us a key to figure out how to negotiate with each other, and it tells us actually who we are.
Wynton MarsalisWhen me and my brother would go to see our daddy playing, there'd be 30 people in the audience. I was only 14 or 15, but I realised something was wrong.
Wynton MarsalisThere's the tradition in jazz of having the โBattle of the Bandsโ and you do not want to get your head cut when you're playing.
Wynton Marsalis