[Dixielandjazz] The Marsalis Message

[Steve Barbone]

Excerpted from A Philadelphia Inquirer Article March 4, 2007

Cheers,
Steve Barbone


Jazz messenger - By Dan DeLuca - Philadelphia Inquirer Nusic Critic

In 1985, when Wynton Marsalis was 23, the jazz trumpeter released an LP
called Black Codes (From the Underground). The high point of Marsalis' Miles
Davis period also marked his debut as a social critic.

The title referred to laws that severely restricted blacks' rights in the
post-Civil War South, but also, as Marsalis explained to critic Stanley
Crouch, everything from "people who equate ignorance with soulfulness" to
"the way they depict women in rock videos." . . .

.. . .the jazz man is once again on his soapbox. On From the Plantation to
the Penitentiary, which comes out Tuesday, he speaks out - with lyrics sung
by Jennifer Sanon and, on one song, rapped over a second-line swing rhythm
by Marsalis himself - about the twin scourges of drugs and materialism, the
evils of gangsta rap and the crisis of education in America, and the
standing of the United States in the world as a result of the war in Iraq.

In the quarter-century since the son of jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis arrived
in New York, Marsalis (who played the Haydn trumpet concerto in E flat major
with the New Orleans Philharmonic when he was 14) has risen to be jazz's
central polarizing figure.

As creative director of Jazz at Lincoln Center and unquestionably the most
identifiable jazz celebrity of his time, Marsalis . . .is either cheered for
treating jazz with the dignity it deserves or jeered as a rigid
conservative. 

Jazz writers trash him even when they're not reviewing him. . .

Marsalis, whom critic Nat Hentoff once called "the Pope of Jazz," has heard
the criticisms many times over, and rejects being labeled a conservative.
"That's just people trying to discredit an opinion they don't agree with,"
he says.

Question: In your notes to "Find Me," on Plantation, you write, "The
question is how do you use your time on earth? Will you use it wisely?" You
seem like a guy who's worked very hard to make the most of his time.

A: I'm always trying to have a good time, but also to use the time that we
have. Because it's here, and then that's it. That's why I've got that song
on the album, "Do your thing, do your thing." Because this is your time. . .


Q: The title song on From the Plantation to the Penitentiary paints a grim
picture. "From the yassuh boss to the ghetto minstrelsy... from the stock in
slaves, to the booming prison trade." Do you think that American culture -
and black culture - is at a crisis point?

A: Yes. But if you asked me that in 1985, when we recorded Black Codes (From
the Underground), I would have said yeah then, too.

I can remember being on the bandstand with my brother [Branford] when I was
15 and he was 16, playing some song like "Shake Your Booty," or "Play That
Funky Music." And I said to him, "This is the dumbest [stuff] ever. I don't
think it can get any stupider than this!"

He looked at me, and deadpanned: "It can, and it will." He was like: "This
[stuff] is nothing. You only think this is dumb. Just wait." I'll never
forget how he told me that. Ha!

If you asked anybody who was black in the 1970s that was listening to Stevie
Wonder and Marvin Gaye, if there was going to be a type of music coming
along that calls people niggers - we would never have believed it. No way.
After the Civil Rights movement? C'mon! So what he said was truly prophetic.
We saw it happen.

Q: Why do you think it happened?

A: I think there are a myriad of reasons. First, there's a belief in the
generation gap. Second is the exploitation of kids. When you're exploiting
people, and exploiting their sexuality, you have to find new ways to
continue to do that...

The third thing is the traditional American relationship with the minstrel
show. Black people acting the fool. Always, there's some money to be made
off of that. It's comfortable to the national psyche. And also black
people's enjoyment of that - for taking what is serious and reducing it to
entertainment, which is the same thing that happened with religious music.
And it starts with the whole belief in youth music, and the separation of
the 14-year-old from their parents.

Q: And do you see all of those things as bad?

A: It's not a matter of good or bad. It is what it is. If you're making
money off of it, it's not bad. If you have a 12-year-old daughter, it's bad.
[Marsalis is the father of three sons, age 18, 16, and 11.]

Q: Do you have any use for hip-hop?

A: No.

Q: Do you believe there's good stuff but you're just not interested in it?

A: I believe there are always good things in everything. All prisons are not
bad. All drugs are not bad. I'm also not knowledgeable enough about it to
make an accurate assessment of the quality of it. I look at it in relation
to all of the American music that's available to me, and in terms of the
level of musicianship and improvisation... and I don't have that much
respect for it. And I feel that from a musical standpoint, it would be very
difficult for me to be proven incorrect about that.

Q: And yet, there's a song on From the Plantation called "Where Y'All At?"
on which you rap, or at least chant. "You got to speak the language the
people are speakin' / Especially when you see the havoc it's wreakin.' "

A: Well, you know, in New Orleans, we was making up rhymes to beef long
before there was something called rap. And we used to do all our rhyming to
"I-ko, I-ko, un-day, jock-a-mo fee-no ai na-né."

So I didn't have to practice that, if you know what I'm saying. I didn't
have to think about having to talk on top of this beat. It's natural...
That's fun, but that's very different from being a musician. Being a
producer and taking samples and beats and putting them together with rhymes
to make a song, there's an art to that. But don't confuse that with being a
musician. It does result in an artifact that is music. But that's a totally
different skill. There's no way you could program the drums to play the way
Ali [Jackson Jr.] is playing on "Where Y'all At?" . . .

Q: What do you think of the state of jazz, compared to when you came to New
York in the late '70s?

A: There's a lot more musicians playing now, I think. We've lost a lot of
people: Art Blakey, Betty Carter, Gerry Mulligan, Sarah Vaughan. But there
are a lot more musicians trying to play.

Q: So if you arrived in New York today, would there be more opportunity to
play?

A: Probably, yeah. There's a little more philosophical clarity than there
was then, embracing the whole history of it... Then, there was a question
about what jazz is. Is it funk? Is it fusion? I think now a lot of the jazz
musicians know the difference between a backbeat and a swing rhythm...
Though hip-hop has made it so the majority of people who listen to
electronic music have never heard serious musicians play.

In my time, the challenge was trying to get musicians to play jazz. Finding
a bass player, finding a drummer. But any kind of artist, coming to New
York, you're going to struggle. Playwright, photographer, dancer: you've got
to find your place, your integrity, your voice, your sense of what it is
you're doing. You have to be uncompromising in your belief in your
direction. And that's a hard thing to put on a younger person.