This is not a book
Target
Taking care of business -
or a long vacation?
Wynton, and his critics
Wynton Marsalis
'the established cats who should have been setting an example
were bullshitting and wearing dresses and trying to act like
rock stars. So when people heard me they knew it was time to
start taking care of business again.'
Wayne Shorter
'Back in the 70s (Wynton) showed up at my house by surprise...
he wanted to watch me while I listened to the Plugged Nickel
album. That means, to me, that at that time he was in a position
to grasp the profundity of what was going on then at those Plugged
Nickel dates. Somewhere after that, between when he left my house
and now, that grasping process is on vacation - quite a long
vacation.'
Francis Davis
'According to Marsalis jazz went crazy in the 1960s for the same
reason the rest of the world did: no one was tough enough, dedicated
enough, man enough, to live up to its responsibilities. Although
its difficult to fault Marsalis as a trumpeter or bandleader,
I sometimes wonder what it says about this era of jazz that so
resolutely conservative a young musician has become its cynosure.'
Wynton Marsalis
'The music was always based around melody. Solos didn't come
into fashion until Louis Armstrong and didn't become ingrained
into jazz until the bebop thing came along. So I think that there
will be more emphasis put on presentation and composition as
opposed to just soloing, which is really a boring and predictable
way of presenting music...The initial impetus of music wasn't
even to solo. Soloing was a special thing. The solo always lifted
the tune up. As time passed you had a good 40 years in jazz before
they started doing that. I mean they'd do it at a jam session.
It's a ritual in a jam session but not at a concert... That came
in during the forties with Charlie Parker and everybody. Before
that it was always the arrangements and a little bit of solo
... But that kind of situation, where you have soloists that
are just OK that solo for a real long time, I don't think that
was part of the plan'.
Keith Jarrett
'I haven't heard him (Marsalis) swing. Or play the blues. Or
play music really. There's a point where it's up to history,
but if the jazz world is saying this is good, accepting this,
we're creating a new generation of people who are not really
listening ... I don't feel envious of Wynton Marsalis, I feel
sorry for him. He was too young to know how to handle what happened.'
Lester Bowie interviewed in The Wire, July
1993
'After that last interview I've started to seriously question
just what (Marsalis's) involvement with the music is. I think
it's detrimental. I think there's something evil somewhere. Because
it's getting out of the realm of just not knowing or of being
young. This is like a deliberate effort to sabotage the development
of the music. I mean, if that's the way he's talking about Miles,
he must think I'm a piece of shit...'
Q: You said once that you think Wynton is using the concept
of the tradition to destroy the tradition
'Yeah, to destroy it. He's using a partial concept of the
tradition. If you're talking about the tradition in jazz, what
about the tradition of innovation, creativity, moving forward,
being contemporary. Is that not part of the tradition of jazz?
What about the tradition of having and maintaining an individual
voice. Tradition has to be taking the music as a whole... What
we were doing in the 60s was trying to be different - that's
the whole idea. All the guys that taught us to be creative, so
what were we going to do - come up with an imitation of them?'