Wynton Marsalis Quotes

I believe that blues and jazz are the two uniquely American contributions into music.

Because the blues is the basis of most American music in the 20th century. It's a 12-bar form that's played by jazz, bluegrass and country musicians. It has a rhythmic vocabulary that's been used by rock n' roll. It's related to spirituals, and even the American fiddle tradition.

Blues is such a dynamic and ever-changing system of music.

Blues is one of the most important art forms. It's an amazing music, and we don't want to lose it.

The blues are like the fugue in 18th century. It's probably the music that belongs most to our time.

Jazz music, as is also the case with the old down-home spirituals, gospel and jubilee songs, jumps, shouts and moans, is essentially an American vernacular or idiomatic modification of musical conventions imported from Europe, beginning back during the time of the early settlers of the original colonies.

People are going to wake up to this great reservoir of music we've created in America - cakewalks, one-steps, boogie-woogie, country and western. I had a bit to do with one of those traditions.

I grew up with a heavy diet of gospel, folk, and blues because those are kind of the cornerstones of traditional American music.

As far as I'm concerned, blues and jazz are the great American contributions to music.

Blues was made for the recessed.

It is from the blues that all that may be called American music derives its most distinctive character.

Yes, the audience is so important to Negro music, especially the element of call and response.

New Orleans jazz is a complex and embracing art form that began about the same time as the blues and encompassed many of its excellences.

Blues and jazz are such a root to music.

All jazz comes from blues. Blues first.

I'm all into Jazz; I'm into New Orleans type music. There is country, there is southern gospel. I'm a huge southern gospel fan.

Jazz is the music of unemployment.

I was into playing American music, especially the blues.

The Righteous Brothers were purely rhythm and blues, black music.

The blues and jazz will live forever... So will the Delta and the Big Easy.

My dad loved black singers. So listening to New Orleans music, eventually I wanted to play an instrument.

The blues is a mighty long road. Or it could be a river, one that twists and turns and flows into a sea of limitless musical potential.

I think that American music, for me, it's a synthesis of a lot of different things. But for me growing up in North Carolina, the stuff that I was listening to, the things that I was hearing, it was all about black music, about soul music.

Jazz told people about the special music that came out of America and about America in general and this kind of liberty and freedom that we have.

I liked blues from the time my mother used to take me to church. I started to listen to gospel music, so I liked that. But I had an aunt at that time, my mother's aunt who bought records by people like Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and a few others.