Branford Marsalis

Jazz fans love Miles and I love him for a myriad of reasons, but the overviews are always too simplistic.

Pop doesn’t really look back. It can’t. What makes pop work is simplicity.

We all played bad before we played good.

Jazz is so incestuous that it’s starting to kill itself.

My job is to write songs that have emotional meaning to me.

So much of Jazz doesn’t have an audience other than music students or musicians.

Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had never heard it before.

Jazz musician is a combination entertainer, poet, singer, educator, student, artist, seducer and all-round good fellow.

The beauty of Jazz is that it’s malleable. People address it to suit their own personalities.

Music is interior decoration.

There is two kinds of music, the good and the bad. I play the good kind.

I do not wear my emotions on my sleeve; I write about them.

I think Ive done the best I could have done. But I keep wanting to play better, go further. There are so many sounds I still want to make, so many things I havent yet done. When I was younger I thought maybe Id reached that peak. But Im 86 now, and if I make it through to next month, Ill be 87. And now I know it can never be perfect, it can never be exactly what it should be, so you got to keep going further, getting better.

Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate in order to get the most out of it. You must absorb it.

Paint pictures with sound. First, find your white-the deepest, roundest sound you can play on the guitar. Then, find your black-which is the most extreme tonal difference from white you can play. Now, just pick the note where you’ve got white, pick it where you’ve got black, and then find all those colors in between. Get those colors down, and you’ll be able to express almost any emotion on the guitar.?

I had a really good time in New Orleans, although I had some very tragic times in Baton Rouge. Some guys beat me up and threw my horn away. ‘Cause I had a beard, then, and long hair like the Beatles.

I’m going to make music out of whatever style it is, being true to the artform itself.

If you want to make money in music, get into the band uniform business.

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It’s like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won’t let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you’re allowed to sleep. It’s always in the middle of the night, or you’re half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them…

I like people who have worked long and hard, developing through introspection and dedication.

People will hire you and then tell you not to do what you were doing when they heard you.