2006-07 Broadcast Season
Broadcast Program Transcripts
Episode #2214
Marsalis on Jazz and More

Brown: Natalie Bullock-Brown, host
Marsalis: Wynton Marsalis

Brown: He is a Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winning jazz trumpeter, one of the world’s most accomplished musicians. We were able to catch up and talk with Wynton Marsalis during his recent visit to UNC Chapel Hill’s Memorial Hall. You can hear that interview next on Black Issues Forum.

Voiceover: Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting UNC-TV.
Brown: World class musicians have been known to make appearances in North Carolina, some more frequently than others. Almost annually Wynton Marsalis and his Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra appear at UNC Chapel Hill for one night only. And that show generally sells out months in advance. So Black Issues Forum was honored when Wynton consented to forgo rest time prior to his concert to speak with us. To start we wanted to find out what he thought about African-American support of jazz music.

Marsalis: I don’t think that our people really have developed an understanding of the value of art. And jazz of course being our principal art because we are in a large part instrumental in it being invented. We just, we can’t come to a feeling for it. It is a shame for us because the music would enlighten us and allow us to understand who we are in the world, who we are in this country in a non-exclusive way because the music embraces all people. And one day we will come around to it. As long as I have been alive, my father was a jazz musician, he beat his head against that wall for years trying to get our people into the music. And with me it has been the same, just years of frustration trying to-but it is like you can’t water it down enough for us to like it, you know? Once you water it down to a certain point it doesn’t really make a difference, there is so little substance left to it that it doesn’t really make a difference who likes it. So it is hard.

Brown: So basically because we are not really interested in art in general, we don’t appreciate our own art, we just can’t get with jazz. Do you think there is something about the music that repels us?

Marsalis: No I don’t think it is the music, I think it is art.

Brown: So just in general?

Marsalis: In general, just anything that has a development section, has thematically developed ideas that require a certain amount of attention and education to embrace. We have yet to come to a consciousness that allows us to embrace that. Now we’ve only been really out of segregation for 40 or so years so. We are still young to kind of-but even that is not an excuse because I mean we create the spirituals and we are responsible for the creation of rag time. We have a long history and tradition of great artists who fought this same battle. But we are part of a whole larger American movement away from art, too. It is not like there is an America clamoring for art or that we are the most artistically and culturally conscious country in the world. To the contrary; we are one of the most, kind of our political leadership and everything is so completely and thoroughly culturally ignorant. That is why we make the type of mistakes we make around the world. So we are a part of that movement. But we have created a lot of art to be a people who are not into it.

Brown: In light of the disconnect Wynton says black people have when it comes to jazz, I thought that perhaps he is motivated to do what he does by a desire to help enlighten not only black people but people in general. So I asked. Why do you work so hard to promote jazz?

Marsalis: You know I don’t work so much to promote the music. I play it and I teach about it mainly because art forms, they teach you about your way of life because they come from that way of life. And they, they-like people felt a certain thing when they were slaves. They could see that they were connected in some way to the stories in the Old Testament. So they created a body of song and those songs are the spirituals. And those people sang those songs because they reminded them of who they were, and those songs brought those people together. And those songs expressed a certain pathos and a certain joy. It expressed something about that experience. Scott Joplin created rag time. He was one of the great composers of that form. And that form exists to let us know something about him and his experience. Jazz was invented to let you know that it was okay to be yourself and it was all right for you to express how you feel about other things. It was a very personal expression. It let you know that you were a person and that you could objectify your experience and that though you were enslaved in democracy, that you actually endorse democracy, you are about freedom, personal freedom, and the ability of a group to work together. So when I talk about things that are in jazz to people who may not be musicians, the subject is jazz but through jazz we see things about our way of life.

Brown: So it sounds like if you take that approach with jazz and you look at it to help you understand who you are and that you can be yourself and that the music allows you to be yourself, it celebrates you being yourself-I am still having a hard time with why our people won’t, can’t see themselves in the music and also somehow be liberated by it.

Marsalis: Well you have to be taught that. It is like a kid who believes something about themselves that it not true. A person believes they are ugly. Everybody tells them they are ugly, the people in their family have hurt their feelings many times and then they start to believe that they are ugly. What it is going to take for you to deprogram them is a lot of education, a lot of nurturing, a lot of love. Our people have had to travail in the United States. I mean we are coming out of it but from that experience, that experience produced a lot of artists. But the artists are always kind of the most enlightened people. Now to transfer that to the populous would require a tremendous amount of education. The populous are people who are already in shock-like you need one big mass therapy for seven or eight generations of it, family systems broken up, x, x, x, x, x, under a lot of pressure, now you are talking about art. Okay that is, with a lot of education yeah our people would take to it. Look at our education system. Look at what-even the people who are educated in our group many times, the education takes them culturally away from their identity because the black experience in our country was always considered to be something not worthy of inclusion. And there is a tradition of that. So it takes time for all of these kind of negative traditions to be replaced. And it just, there needs to be a lot of-and who is going to do the educating? Who is doing the educating? No one. So we’ve got a ways to go.

Brown: I feel like this is a good time to talk about Hurricane Katrina and your efforts to try and help those people that were displaced. I want to know just in general what was your, how did you feel?

Marsalis: It is hard to really say how you, it is hard to explain how I felt about it. I guess it is not anything you could ever imagine because it wasn’t just a, your town, it is like all of your memories, all of your kind of old people, all of the-it was like your whole world. I guess it is kind of like something somebody says you don’t know how you are going to feel when your parents die until it happens. You can’t, nobody can prepare you for that kind of feeling or loss. Because you are losing something that is not, whether you talk to them every day, you are losing a thing that is in your whole memory and consciousness. So that was what that was like to see that happen. In terms of is what we do to come back and the political systems and all the government, all of the things that are in evidence, the other negative things are clear but there are many positive things also, the tremendous outpouring of concern from people all over the country. People from New Orleans themselves have come back and tried to do whatever they could do to revive the city. And we have a long road to go; there is tremendous devastation. Once again it is one of those things that is not going to be corrected overnight. It is not going to be a two-hour movie with a happy ending. It is going to be a long kind of grind. And the city will come back. But it is going to be hard for a long time.

Brown: How happy were you with the effort that you mounted to raise funds through Jazz at Lincoln Center and PBS?

Marsalis: I think we did it, Jazz at Lincoln Center, through the Higher Ground Hurricane Relief Fund it was good-we raised over $3 million. We dispersed it to a lot of musicians. We still have some money in the fund that we are looking at how we are, what we are going to do with that. So many people did a lot, a lot of money was raised in a lot of places in a real part of that effort. And we did work on the Mayor’s Commission to Bring Back New Orleans. That seems like it has not amounted to much; it was a lot of work to kind of say what we thought should happen with the cultural sector. But there just is not the type of infrastructure and intellectual understanding of that type of document to get anything done at this time. The document is still there and hopefully something will be done to act on kind of the things that we came up with, some kind of organizational ideas that could take us from where we are now to where we need to be.

Brown: You are from New Orleans, basically you are from Kennar. That is basically New Orleans, right? You live in New York now. You are in North Carolina. When you go to different parts of the country on tour and doing the things that you do, are you ever surprised or have you noticed any difference in the way you are received in the North as opposed to the South and the East as opposed to the West?
Marsalis: Well the South is different. I am from the South so of course when I get in the South I am automatically, you know the weather, the way the people are, it is what I grew up in so I am used to it. I even spent time in North Carolina in high school at the Eastern Music Festival in Greensboro. You know so I mean just, regions have a different feeling to them. It is difficult to describe it, everything, the smell of it, the feel. So I experience that. But I think audiences you know it depends on the audience. Like we had a real responsive audience in Atlanta the other night, a lot of guys’ families were there. It was Marcus Brennan’s mother’s birthday so you know we played for him. A guy who played trombone used to play with Lawrence Welk came out and played with us. He was killing-Bob Havens was his name. He was playing. And the people were very responsive to solos, giving standing ovations after people played. That was unusual. In general you can get a good audience sometimes in Detroit, Chicago. I get a feeling of different places have different audiences but sometimes you don’t know, one year you might have one type of audience. You might go to that same place and you get a more reserved audience.

Brown: I asked if there is a difference in the way an audience responds to a performance when there are a good number of African-Americans in the house.
Marsalis: They more respond more like they are in church. You know it is more kind of call and response if they are not bored to death. You see it kind of depends. Like sometimes you get them and they will be like, “When is this going to be over?” But when you get like that core of them that is enlightened like Chicago sometimes, Detroit, you can get, Atlanta you have, some other places, South Carolina. In Columbia people will come out and they will be like, “Hey.”
Brown: They know what’s going on?

Marsalis: You know they’ve got their kind of feeling. The best is when you get like a good integrated audience and they have that, you get a feeling for what the music is. Like what it represents to our culture, to our country. You have people of all ages, races. You’ve got-and on the bandstand there are all kinds of people of all age, people can come sit in and it is, that is more like what we are about. And it is informal and it’s formal. Not everybody likes that, there are people more Southern, you know, down home.

Brown: And when you have that type of audience that is responding to you guys and I mean, I know you guys are going to play regardless. You are going to be on your game, you are going to be on the top of it. But when you have an audience that is really enjoying what you are doing what does that do for you all?
Marsalis: It makes a difference. Just like when you are talking to somebody and they are listening to you and they are asking you questions that have something to do with what you are saying. If the people are into it, it makes you be more into it. That doesn’t mean you are going to sound better but you are going to feel like you sound better. You know you will feel like, “Man we are getting us something.” Then you hear the tape you might thing, “Ugh.” The tape at the place where the people didn’t say anything will sound much better maybe but the feeling would be much warmer, everybody together.

Brown: All the talk about call and response inspired me to ask Wynton if he grew up in the church. And although his answer was no, he explained that in New Orleans the church experience helps to define daily life.

Marsalis: The way we talk, we would call and response ourselves. “Are you going down there? No man.” You know we-“What you talking about brother? You don’t know what you are saying.” I mean we do our own, our whole way of dealing with each other. And of course because I knew so many musicians, I was always in the church playing. My partner Kermit Campbell we played together in a funk band. I would be going to the church to see the women; I wasn’t really so much about the word.

Brown: You just let it out didn’t you?

Marsalis: I’m telling the truth about it.

Brown: Well you are, I am sure you are not alone.

Marsalis: That was back when you know, church was a little different than what it is now. You had a good attendance.

Brown: It is not quite like that now.

Marsalis: It is not like that now.

Brown: Different topic, why is it important to do concerts for college-age young people or even elementary-age kids and what do they need to know about the music and how will it help them, if at all?

Marsalis: Well I think that the whole artistic experience should be a part of our lives from elementary school until we, until the day we die. For some reason we understand about little kids, they paint and they draw and they play music and they write stories. But when they get to third, fourth grade we lose that basic understanding of how the arts help you to collect your knowledge and put them in a context that makes life much more comprehensible. We lose that and then they don’t have anything. Then the next time they encounter art with any significance they are being exploited because they are teenagers and they discover their sexuality. That is too bad for our country. That is a bad decision we made. I find that many times you play in colleges there are not a lot of college students coming. It is mainly older people come, professors and people who are part of the college system. And that also is too bad. It is important for people all the way through to experience the arts in all forms and just continue to be involved. I like to play for everybody, I don’t care who it is, little kids, big kids.

Brown: Do little kids pay closer attention? Do they respond more?
Marsalis: No, they-little kids don’t have the attention span to sit through any type of artistic thing that doesn’t have call and response or inclusion of them in it. So with little kids when you take them to concerts and stuff like that you know they are going to go to sleep or they are going to be bored. You know that but they still should go. They should still go to museums. They should go to symphonic performances. You should take them to plays because it becomes a part of their experience. So yeah with little kids, but young people’s concerts like we put on things like that where they get to participate and shout out answers. That is more entertaining for them. But it is important for our youngsters to understand that there is an aspect of it that is entertainment. There is an aspect that is education. And then there is an aspect that is just life, like we go to these concerts, we go to this type of dance.

Brown: This is a good time to talk about your new work, “From the Plantation to the Penitentiary.” Tell me about this, what inspired you to write this and what is it about?
Marsalis: “From the Plantation to the Penitentiary” is a collection of songs that talk about our way of life and what we are and what we do. There is a lot of music in it from kind of two-fiddle grooves to New Orleans grooves to African 6:8 rhythms to Motown baselines to of course Swing, I’ve got to stick, get it home with the Swing to kind of, a modified Bosa Nova, soulful rhythms, we put a lot of music in that features a young band, Carlos Enriques, Ali Jackson, great young rhythm section guys I’ve been knowing since they were kids. Dan Limo playing piano. Walter Blendin on the tenor and soprano saxophones. Jennifer Sanders, young lady from Florida, she is like 21 now.

Brown: You found her from Essentially Ellington?

Marsalis: Right, she was a contestant in our Essentially Ellington high school festival. She sang with a band from Florida and she was fantastic. It is just topical issues, mainly stuff I talked about in interviews for years. I just put it in songs with words. And I don’t know what else to say.

Brown: Well it is all very kind of super-political.

Marsalis: I don’t know why stuff gets called what it is called. I’ve stopped trying to figure it out years ago. At first you are radical then you are conservative then you are, you know if you don’t like Hip Hop you are not black. I tell people we were black before 1983. You know I wasn’t waiting for somebody to start talking on a record to realize I was black. But this terminology and all this stuff, I don’t know what they say or what-I just try to continue to be creative and put music out that my musicians want to play and what we discuss and I try to be truthful about it. And we’ve got another record coming out in June, “Congo Square.” We just keep dealing with the music.

Brown: Why do you think you have risen to the stature you have as an ambassador known world-wide for jazz?

Marsalis: Well I mean I’ve been very consistent since I was 18 from a philosophical standpoint. I think people can feel it if you love people. I like people you know so I don’t have a problem dealing with people, signing autographs, people talking to people. I am not really, can’t be pushed around. I believe something, I study, try to read about it, try to be serious. You ask me a question I’ll be serious. So everybody thinks I am ultra serious but I clown around and play a lot as you know. I joke around but people’s lives are serious to me. And issues are serious. And I just think that people reward you for how you have treated them. I have been in front of so many people so consistently for so many years, taught so many people’s kids you know, been in so many classrooms, been in-that experience is what it is, it is not feigned, it is not fake. And I think people feel that and they know that it is true. And I’ll play anywhere; I’ve played everywhere from prisons to elementary schools to projects. I know we are all out there trying to figure out what is happening. And I feel like I’ve had that same feeling all over the world wherever I go. And the people know, like Louis Armstrong said people know he is there in the cause of happiness. They know I am coming to Swing, have a good time, play music, and they like that, you know? Everybody likes to have a good time and feel good.

Brown: Do you ever marvel, despite what you are saying or I guess beyond what your are saying, about your consistency and the experience that you’ve had, do you ever marvel at the fact that so many labels have kind of shut down, so many people who had deals no longer have deals but you’ve stayed, I mean you’ve kind of had this consistent climb even when there has been this consistent decline?
Marsalis: I do, I think about it. I think about all these years I’ve been touring and I only had one kind of bad year. I think it was 1987 or something. And even in that year a lot of the promoters were just, looked out for me like, “Okay man you know you-;”once in 1990-something I think I went to the promoters’ convention of all of the presenters around the country. When I walked into the room I actually almost got filled with tears because all of the people you see like one day, two days over 15 or 20 years. And I can’t understand, I don’t really know why it is that for me it has always been kind of consistent. Even though my record sales fell a lot like everybody’s did, I never really have been out here to sell records and do that. I never try to compromise my integrity or just-I am about what I am about. And my desire is to touch people and to be truthful and to be part of kind of a great heritage, to just continue to do it and be natural. I think people can relate to it, you know? I am grateful for it but I can’t explain it but I am grateful for it. I am going to keep on doing it.

Voiceover: Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting UNC-TV.

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