Russ Button
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My wife recently gave me a book written by an author
who travelled extensively with Wynton Marsalis and
his band. The following is an interesting quote from
Wynton and I felt would be of interest here.
Russ
"You don't necessarily learn about jazz in school. Many folks
have this idea that jazz means you're up there on the bandstand
playing whatever comes into your head, and hopefully when
you're done the other cats will be about done, too. It isn't like
that at all. Jazz improvisation is the creation of blues-based
melodies in the context of harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral variation.
There's a logic to its imposition of order on what would
otherwise be chaos. And we all create the logic as we go along.
The most important emotion in jazz is joy. But you don't create
that joy just by feeling good. You create it by feeling terrible.
Worse than that. About all the bullshit that has been put on
people and continues to be heaped on. You have an empathy, a
desire to improve things, to say stuff can be another way, not just
about black people but the spiritual condition of all people.
You've got to play. Together. You can't play jazz alone.
" Private Reply to Russ Button (new win) |
