Branford Marsalis Quotes

Jazz isn't dead. It just smells funny.

I think the Flecktones are a mixture of acoustic and electronic music with a lot of roots in folk and bluegrass as well as funk and jazz.

Taxi drivers used to ask me what kind of music I did, and I'd say, 'Well, it's kind of jazz, soul, classical' - but that makes no sense to anyone.

I didn't plan on rock-n-roll. I wanted to learn jazz; I got to know some people doing rock-n-roll with jazz, and I thought I could make some money playing music.

In Montreal, there is a friend of mine at school who is a jazz pianist with an amazing voice, and we sort of have this fusion/soul/R&B/folk music kind of thing. We've been keeping it low-key and opening for some friends.

There were a lot of R&B groups that were my heroes, but the funny thing about my career and the way it went and where it went, at first I didn't really want to do pop music. I was a little bit more into jazz and R&B.

Jazz has borrowed from other genres of music and also has lent itself to other genres of music.

I've always loved jazz.

I love Marvin Gaye. I like jazz and all that stuff.

I've never listened to jazz. It's just not something I ever paid attention to.

Jazz is the language of the emotions.

I was introduced to jazz, and that's become a basic concern and passion of mine ever since.

Jazz was always cool. That was what I liked about jazz - it was always cool. Now I see the cats that were basically cool getting kind of uncool. So that ruins what I feel about jazz.

Jazz was home. It created a hunger within me.

I've had the pleasure of playing with the baddest Jazz cats on the planet.

Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz.

Jazz is a democratic musical form. We take our respective instruments & collectively create a thing of beauty.

Instrumental music is increasingly marginalized.

There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazz__that's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.

The chief trouble with jazz is that there is not enough of it; some of it we have to listen to twice.

I don't know where jazz is going. Maybe it's going to hell. You can't make anything go anywhere. It just happens.

Jazz is one of the least learnable art forms.

If you mess around with jazz, you better have a good drummer and a good bass player.

There are a million examples of not feeling the jazz, but using the jazz.

I just can't stand it [jazz/rock]. It just doesn't sound right to me. It doesn't hit me...it doesn't get me...it just doesn't grab me.