My work has been marginalized as far as the jazz-business complex is concerned, or the contemporary-music complex.
Anthony BraxtonGrowing up in the '50s and being in the '60s, in that revolutionary time space, I thought freedom was what I was looking for. Slowly but surely, it became clear that the last thing I was interested in was freedom. Because if you're going to be free, you have to be free from something.
Anthony BraxtonFor the most basic assumption that dictated my early attempts to respond to creative music commentary was the mistaken belief that western journalists had some fundamental understanding of black creativityโor even western creativityโbut this assumption was seriously in error.
Anthony BraxtonI am interested in the study of music and the discipline of music and the experience of music and music as a esoteric mechanism to continue my real intentions.
Anthony BraxtonI had never thought that I would be involved in narrative structures. As a young guy, I was more interested in abstract modeling. But as I got older, I began to see that there was no reason to limit myself to any intellectual or conceptual postulate, when in fact I'm a professional student of music.
Anthony Braxton