Exclusive Interview with Wynton Marsalis

hi i'm antonio garcia from virginia commonwealth university and on behalf of all of my colleagues on the board of directors of the midwest clinic we welcome you to the 2020 midwest clinic staying connected when you speak with went marsalis you're not talking only with a performing artist you're also engaging with a bandleader composer educator artistic director business person and a leading advocate for american culture certainly well known for his classical musicianship his core beliefs and foundation for living are rooted in the principles of jazz he advocates for individual creativity improvisation collective cooperation swing gratitude and good manners sophistication and faces adversity with persistent optimism the blues in past visits to the midwest clinic winton has inspired us not only with his playing but also with his perspectives and hopes for the future so amid the many crises of 2020 we at the midwest clinic asked when for his thoughts as to where we are as musicians as students as educators as a nation as a world and where those intersect he suggested that we speak on the tuesday before thanksgiving so as to have current context for our conversation on behalf of the midwest clinic board of directors and all our viewers thank you for being with us today i also want to thank you on behalf of my three-year-old grandson who watched sesame street with my wife and broadcast with lincoln center and brought great smiles to his face oh man love to him and congratulations grandpa thank you it's a great joy it is a great joy and uh i also caught earlier in the uh in the month uh the democracy sweep broadcast that you did it's one of so many different uh broadcasts that you and lincoln center have done since uh the pandemic hit and uh so i guess my first uh question to you is related to jazz and democracy something you've been uh speaking about for many years i remember distinctly the materials you did with sandra day o'connor the honorable justice of the supreme court many years ago but now here we're talking it's the week of thanksgiving and across the american and possibly beyond the american thanksgiving table we have a lot of division in our country democracy is a messy thing and uh but it moves forward and i wonder if as musicians and as citizens if you have first of all any thoughts you'd like to share about where we are now and where we hope to go sure our system for it to begin to work is going to require a lot more investment from us it's like anything that breaks you you buy something and stuff starts not to work you start trying to figure out why is it not working what can we do to make it better uh there's some suggestions i have is that it is too big for what it's designed to do and i think that once you have a really big system and no one understands how it works it becomes very sophisticated its corruption is also sophisticated at this point the government is now a very sophisticated kleptocracy and um we as citizens have to become more involved i think this vote the voter turnout regardless of the outcome is an indication of the first level of what we need to do and when we look at citizens like stacy abrams and what she did in georgia once again not because of her her party affiliation because of what she did as a citizen we start to see what what we need to do to activate each other as citizens i think we need much more engagement with civics and a greater degree of education because for for democracy citizens have to be acute in their thinking they have to be very reasoned and when you don't have education and a way to discern fact from feeling you is you easily manipulated by a cheap populism as musicians we see that because now our field is overrun with people who can't play any music at all but they are they're celebrated and they they have music that feels good that appeals they use the tools that are at their disposal technology profanity different things that while they have their place that place is not the mainstream so because it's too destructive to you to your internal core and your morality um another thing i think that's important for us is if you look at the way our system works it's community-based and not neighborhood based so community means you have some type of financial engine you have shop stores people who participate and there's a concern for civics then the city that's like the police and the mayor and the the city council and so on and so forth and then it's the state with the state legislature and the governor and the lieutenant governor and uh so on and so forth the state police and then it's the federal government so with the president and the in the the judicial branch and then the congress and when you don't as a as a younger person perceive how those layers work you're not able to function inside of the system and it makes you susceptible to just being a taxpayer whose money goes to a representative who only represents elites that allow them to get more money and it becomes kind of a self-defeating system so i think this kind of has been the first run of people in america saying we want this type of leadership but there's not really a big difference not as big a difference as we're being led to believe between republicans and democrats if you think there's a big difference go to your colleges and universities and ask yourself do i know who's a republican or a democrat walk through neighborhoods say do i know who's a republican or a democrat when you when you look at the segregation by race by age by by gender the different groups we fall into class determines more than party affiliation we are less state-affiliated than we need to be to have the electoral system work the way we have the thought is that a person in pennsylvania would be more concerned with things that going in pennsylvania than they will be with the democratic party and the thought is that a person a local community will be more concerned with voters in their area than they would be with the national outcome we actually have seen that system work in this time because you'll notice how each person regardless of party affiliation who has been called upon to comment on this election has spoken from the standpoint of the procedures and the integrity of of the of the the voting process in their state right and they've been very vociferous and definitive about defending their practices so that gives us a good kind of baseline into the separation of the the central question of our democracy which is once again it's the states versus the strong authority of the federal government as it is also the individual in relationship to the community but if you see the reinforcements on different levels and then you see like your grandkids your kids you it's reinforced and then you and your parents and your grandparents so it's it's a tiered kind of relationship you have as the generation's past to information of course genetically is what it is a fact of science but from a cultural standpoint in terms of your traditions and your beliefs and your your mythology it's the layering across generations also it is in our way of government i think many of us have no idea how our government works one of the challenges of as you mentioned individuals in the community and knowing that midwest clinic attendees are by and large primarily music educators this december and always one of the challenges that i feel uh as a music educator is that in teaching music we have to teach culture uh it really seems very empty to me to try to teach a classical or jazz musician any kind of music without sharing why that music exists and what that person was trying to express at the time and certainly in my daily work of jazz in particular so much of jazz of course is based on uh expressions of oppression and liberation of of segregation and hope and and these these great alternatives that are in front of us and behind us and in front of us so one of the challenges i i perceive in my my brethren uh in in music education is that since we are at the very divided country and even internationally teaching some of the music with the knowledge of the culture can be more challenging because we know our the students and or their parents and or the community are not necessarily united in how they're going to view that information and it you know it it can cause a certain challenge in trying to stay authentic to the true truth of the music at the time so i just wondered in terms of the role of of music educators at this crossroads in our in our timeline if you feel as though there's a any particular um challenge responsibility motivation inspiration you know you can share with us about trying to keep the music authentic no matter what kind of music we're speaking to despite the challenging divisions that we have here education is tied to aspiration and we as teachers are teaching a a a mythology right art is consciousness and it's mythology made physical so it we're teaching the story of us in music it's uh it's creation art you you're playing something you created even if you're if you're playing a piece that john phillips wrote nobody most people in audience don't know who wrote it so it's creation you create the performance it's recreation is something that john phillips susan wrote is something that's been played before and it's recreation it can also be entertainment but because we're teaching it we're not teaching the entertainment part of it as much as we're teaching the substance part of it so we have to distinguish it's like a teacher goes into a math class is really a funny teacher great but the teacher's not there to be funny the teacher may be funding and you have a great time in class but the teacher is there to teach you particulars of math as music teachers they're particulars of music in america we have problems teaching because the racism kept us from embracing the best of our musical traditions now's the time for us to readdress that not by lowering our standards to go along with our prejudice and say well okay black people you know they're ignorant so here's to make the music they came up with let's teach kids that go back and get duke ellington's music and get the music that is going to require you to learn something and when you're teaching yourself teach your students and then they will be better off so teacher students don't require teachers to show them how to play the popular sound of the moment i was curious to me being in bands how it is that every other subject in school had nothing to do what i felt about it but bam even basketball but bam was the one thing that was like well we want to play this oh we got to play with the kids we want to play i didn't go to the basketball coach and say i don't want to do these drills i don't want to and i certainly did not do that in english or or history or you know any other subject so as teachers we use music it can inspire inner growth and contemplation and discernment it can teach you how to figure figure out how to tell one thing from another an art puts you in contact with the mythic substance of human history so we have a responsibility to teach our own tradition it's american traditions because that's what we're talking about but how our traditions fit into other traditions in the world we have to do it all at once just give our students a sense of what the world is and try to be more and more acute but the most important thing for us to do is to teach our students how to think and to perceive symbolically because music is a symbolic language so everything down how you sit the songs you play the function of your your part the history and traditions of the music you're playing where it comes from what it aspires to be what the composer was was like and about and what does the music represent what does it mean it's like uh sometimes i go to church services and people are playing like like pop tunes and they're joking like that in the church what does that have to do with church nothing wrong with joking on a saturday dance but this is church so it's an understanding of meaning and it also art informs your perspective and it helps you to develop your attention span right we want our students to be able to think over longer periods of time and we don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water like i know there's a big thing about because you're addressing racism you have to then disrespect great composers like beethoven and bach and you don't have to do that because the standards that they set for cert for the style of music that they wrote in is an unbelievably high standard and we don't have to discard that standard because there's also a high standard in america that was set by people like like gershwin who was aware of that tradition bernstein copeland ellington coltrane monk and it's incumbent upon us to know that and teach our students that in this these styles of music require you to have an attention span and that's very important it also teaches delayed gratification you got to work on these pieces they sound sad like a good friend of mine todd stohl says uh von wiester friendly fear said if it's worth if it's worth playing it's worth playing badly right like you know if you sound sad playing brahms fourth okay so be it you know i know i heard my son in one of the worst performances i ever heard of tchaikovsky fifth in middle school and i you know i did i started to laugh about it but everybody acted like it was a crime i said wait a second we gonna see these kids look worse than that playing basketball and football and nobody is mad about it okay the bandit said they're trying to play great music and they will become much better because of your aspiration for them and finally i think that when a community invests in the arts and in arts education and the things that we've been talking about symbolic mythology and meaning and history and these things they're more likely to be enlightened informed and they're more more likely to be friendly to other people and that's very very important the more ignorant you are the more you're going to be hostile to strangers so a really a relationship with the arts sharpens your judgment uh and it influences both your personal decision making and the decision making of a community so when you walk into a band into a band room i know it's every day it's a grind the students don't want to be there a lot of times you got to find some way to motivate them the parents don't know the importance of it you know people don't play you got to remember to make it be the greatest experience uh possible by challenging them to the nth degree and saying that's great we're going in this direction just kill them with your positivity and your real power is in the strength and quality of the music you play i can't stress that enough to ban directors and music educators do not dumb down your music for students and parents don't do it i remember meeting once with the the mother of a high school student i was teaching in a high school band honor band setting and the mom said to me she said i've noticed a change in my son since he's taken music and what's that says well he's discovered it's very difficult to hate people when you love their music you go and you know it just opens doors you see if you learn the real music yeah and you know we are we we're educators we're not entertainers i remember in college reading a book that a teacher had recommended to me there was a book called steppenwolf by herman hesse and at one point there's a hallucinogenic dream of the of the the main character and he sees the ghost of mozart who tried leads them and down some caves and they hear some some music on a radio it's got all this static on the am channel that you and i grew up with so they're trying to listen to this this beethoven music uh that it's got uh static all over it and the protagonist says oh it sounds horrible and mozart says you're an idiot says it's still beethoven just listen through the static you know and that's what it's like when you're trying to play new music and you you sound horrible it's still great music but you're going to get there if you if you wade through and and learn that long-term gratification right so i think that for our teachers yeah defend yourself with the quality of your music and always try to learn more about and challenge your students make them come up to you don't don't don't go don't teach down no matter how sad it is make a joke out of it you know okay my son when he was playing clarinet when he was still squeaking i'd be like oh i'm feeling you now you know i played in the trumpet section with marcus belgrave a great trumpet player educator from detroit played with ray charles and it's unbelievable he's passed on now but whenever we would miss notes or we play a party we didn't sound good he would say you playing with a lot of expression and the worst you played he said boy there's a lot of expression up here that's very gracious yeah you know [Laughter] yeah shifting a little bit from the music educator standpoint to the the artist performing artist standpoint although obviously the overlap can be huge but for the performing artists i'm i'm struck by artists in general and how they can affect the world in ways that would not be anticipated so for instance when i was growing up in new orleans there was in the catholic school that i was going to there was this comic book that came out was called treasure chest i don't know if you ever ran across it but it was like a monthly comic book it was actually distributed by the archdiocese of new orleans so some point in the mid 60s when i was about six years old or something this comic book came out usually you'll see like biographies of mother teresa or this and that in comic book form you know educational stuff and they had this like 10 part series over months it was like a serialized comic strip and it was a presidential campaign set ahead in the far away future year of 1976 and it went on for about literally for about 10 issues like maybe almost a year and at the end on the final page you discover that the winning candidate for the party convention for president of the united states is a black man now this was a comic book distributed by the archdiocese of new orleans in the deep south in new orleans in the middle of the 1960s right but and i was shocked and i mean i was i was shocked in retrospect i wasn't shocked then i'm shocked in retrospect that it could happen but i tell you that 50 years later not a year goes by not six months go by where i don't remember that and ever since i was like six years old i always thought it was possible for a black man to be president because that artist made it possible so along those lines as as artists influencing things that are maybe indirect and yet direct um you know in our native new orleans you certainly had an influence uh on then mayor mitch landrieu when new orleans was going through something that now my native richmond is going through more recently in terms of what to do about statues related to the confederacy and to slavery and and you had a conversation with him that influenced his movement to decide several years ago okay we're going to take down some statues so aside from the statue issue itself which obviously people feel very different about but just in terms of an artist in this time and in any time having a chance to influence the world influence the community make it make a mark in a way that that lasts i'd be curious what thoughts you have i remember one point you said something like and again this conversation doesn't have to be related to statues but you said something like yes it was history when people decided to put it up and it's history when they decide to take it down it doesn't make it worse or better it's just history um and and one doesn't preclude the other so i just wondered we talked a little bit about music education but from the standpoint of performing artists if you have any particular thoughts about the performing artist place in the world to make a statement that might actually resonate beyond the notes for instance as a musical performer everything we do is a part of what is being done i know abraham lincoln when he saw harry beecher stoke he had read uncle tom's uh cabin and he said this is the young lady that is responsible for this great war okay he was he was joking but she was a part of it and i think that uh if you take the 1960s all of the consciousness music like uh we shall overcome was an anthem that we all uh we all know and we were aware of it and you take the effect that the that the the american negro spirituals had on people in the country you take the effect of all of the folk music in the 60s all of the answer is blowing in in the wind and peter paul berry and bob dylan and you know the list goes on and on of people who were dealing with consciousness music and then and after american music people like james brown and marvin gaye and you start to get a baseline of understanding about uh the power of of the arts now that said how many how many artists were against the rise of of nazism in germany man there were many they didn't stop it picasso's guernica against the spanish civil war didn't stop it um it doesn't mean we should not we shouldn't be very forceful in presenting our vision of the world and universal humanism is a very deep concept that the greatest artists have that beethoven's ninth that's the whole point of it universal humanism and the greatest of artists are almost always universal humanists you can find some people that aren't every now and then their creativity will be fueled by the kind of dislike of some group but that's very rare you could run down list that's and in america it's really rare the quintessential kind of american artist if you want a white person let's say walt whitman he was absolutely universal humanism 101. if you if you can accept the genius of a black person duke ellington universal humanness so i believe in participating and i don't really care whether people think confederate statues should still be up this is a democracy we get to present our views and fight over what we think should be and sometimes you win fights and sometimes you lose them this only gives you the opportunity to fight without being killed that's what your opportunity is it doesn't guarantee that you're going to win it doesn't guarantee that the only guarantee is you have the opportunity to present your case and to go inside of the system and work with it and massage it and do what you can to create the change you would like to see in form coalitions and get together it is the most civilized way to work with 300 something million people with different viewpoints we have more than two free points on any subject most people's viewpoints probably is not they should stay or they should go most people have a very nuanced viewpoint but what will happen will be one or two things even my my my thought about it is to not be watered down talking about every statue that should go because i'm really not even a statue person i very seldom even look at statues but the question is when people are against democracy they should not be celebrated in a democracy and there's no such thing as a slave state that is libertarian the two things don't go together okay you have to make a choice in those instances in most things in life you don't have to make a choice if you think you go through your day every day and you believe one or two you can believe two things sometimes you can believe two opposite things at the same time many times we have indecision about all kinds of things when it comes to central and key things in our politic sometimes you're forced to make a decision and a choice and if you're an artist you create music out of some type of consciousness and awareness and you're interpreting a symbolic mythology and your responsibility should you choose to accept that is to look at that mythology and report on what you see on what you hear and if you hear and see things that don't go what was popular you're just living up in a bad time for you you know but many times we compromise because it's just easier to do you only you can decide what you feel you're willing to compromise on like when i look at both of our parties there are things i don't like about both of them so then i have to start prioritizing what what do i but when i'm put in a situation where i have to choose one or the other and this one is evil and this one is great i'm putting a bad a bad pair i mean a pair of bad friend but i do have to choose one another when i vote that is i do have to make that choice so i start prioritizing we have to as artists we prioritize some artists they're not interested in being involved in social things and politics they can write they can they can paint a beautiful internal life or a beautiful flower some people can write great lyric poetry of love songs of the most beautiful things you've ever heard they're not they're not gonna comment on police brutality like this and that's okay some people don't like to sign autographs there's nothing wrong with that they play their concert they want to go home some people you know we all we all are very different but i think that the arts teach us how to perceive the world and understand our place in the world if we are taught the arts the easiest thing is to just teach entertainment and we don't need that at this time we're seeing now in our body politic the fact that we as citizens are not acute in our understanding of our way of government and the people that we put in charge in both parties we're being exploited we're being made of full love we need to take the time to figure out what's going on and what that what what is the extent of our power and we need to wield it now when you speak about uh presenting uh viewpoints and presenting to audiences in particular it brings to mind the question that is true during the covet era but certainly going to be true in the postcovid era when we get past this in terms of bringing in audiences and dealing with the budget concerns uh bands and orchestras which make up the vast majority of the attendees of the midwest clinic bands and orchestras their students their directors their communities uh bands and orchestras are a bit under threat i mean they're they're large organizations it costs money uh they tend to play uh often music that of people that precedes them although there's a push now to play also more contemporary composers so i wonder if you have as from the viewpoint of a performer but also someone who of course is in charge of the direction of a major concert venue uh in jazz at lincoln center uh if you have some thoughts to share about how best to to bring in audiences maybe in the post covert era how to diversify what it is we share with them so that they can find themselves in us uh any any share any thoughts to share particularly for band and orchestra directors yeah i think make it be personal call parents get you i've i've been done so many master classes there's so many been to so many band rooms you know so it's a hobby and i love band directors after saying all of my years of doing this you know it's 40 years now basically going into different directors bands hearing their students play i've never had a bad experience with a band director elementary school bands high school college people of great accomplishment people of no accomplishment rookies veterans people much older than me much younger i can i can say that uh without equivocation their band directors are so so under siege a lot of times and they my most when i go to bands i always say what do you want me to teach them how can i work with what you're doing i'm only here for x time i want to work inside of uh and they always say man i i just want my kids to play better or just don't be too hard on them or just try to see what my experience is am i going to be destructive to kids or constructive or i find band directors to be you know you're on civilized ground and uh i think that we're under siege in our communities uh because we many times are the only line between a civilization and a type of barbarism when it comes to music music is under constant assault and threat if you look at the public in the popular space i'ma tell you as i've been saying for 30 years it's only gotten worse it is not the place for pornography that's a mistake i don't care who co-signs it i don't care if it's what they're doing but they've been doing it we have to be aligned against that it doesn't mean we have to crusade against that we have to be against it by teaching good solid fundamental musical values and incorporate other stuff it's not all only europe is not the only place where great music we're american we have a tradition in this country john phillips tools band played ragtime in in 1902 1901 when they went to europe we have a tradition we have a tradition that even has things that have sexuality in it you can't deal with music and just take all the sexuality out of it something has sexuality it doesn't mean it has to be pornographic and we also have a spiritual tradition we have a lot of traditions here that we need to teach our kids but i think that for us in our communities we got to go back to the old days of the world's finest chocolate sale or the the church function trip that we're going to go 70 miles away to visit another another church on a picnic all the all the things that require us to reach out to a community and galvanize them around an experience for kids and uh it just requires we have to do a lot more calling a lot more talking get our parents boost this group i have to say that when the parents boosters or the banned parents are together you have almost always have a good ban situation when is you trying to do it by yourself it's a lot to lift up so you know i i would say first about the music you will know more about the music than anybody you're dealing with in most instances use your knowledge wisely don't don't teach down teach up and get your parents involved get them around get them involved in their kids and uh be in the community schedule as many concerts as you can get your band out doesn't matter how bad they sound embrace that i love a good bad sounding band you know we're teaching them they're going to get better we all we've been a part of sad bands man i've been a part of bands that were so sad when i auditioned for high school out in eighth grade i was so sad playing that the band director looked at me and said are you sure you're ellis's son like you know oh george mark's a d lasalle yeah and you know you know you know george yeah he did loyal a summer band when we were both in the summer band together yeah george looked at me like man just what you this is what you're dealing with wow you can't play and you know we we're teaching kids to play and once we give up on quality then we're in trouble now record companies and commercial interests are running stuff and i don't need a band director then i get a kid out the band to teach the band so you know that's that's my advice for us in our communities be in that community and there's a lot of extra work yeah calling people getting them involved but you know people will come around for their kids well the payoff is huge the impact on the students is immense and the only bad band is a no band you know i mean when i was right you were de la salle i was jesuit and a jesuit we had a you know we had a concert band but there was no jazz band until my senior year i mean there was none and i didn't know who miles davis charlie parker was or anything and right and but it was when i got that opportunity everything started shifting for me and i found this this love and i was i was definitely sad at it and uh i was hungry you know and we're all struggling and and boy you know what an impact on on a student's life to have an impact whether it's classical jazz or otherwise so it does the only bad band is not a there's no band at all yes you know we played in plenty of sad bands and uh we learned from it and we were we were many times the reason those banners were saying yes and i have the tapes to prove it you know yeah now burn minds i don't don't we have to build our community around us and be serious be serious about it and keep going forward don't let the kind of the populism they're sweeping our country don't fall victim to it it's very provocative you know it's alluring you want to put that shiny suit on don't put it on before we wrap up uh you know we've talked about educators and artists and and the bigger picture in terms of democracy etc just centering on the students which have been part of all of this discussion but in your interactions with students especially during the pandemic the last six months seven months or so you know are you hearing anything in particular from students that uh uh that they're they're calling for that they they wish for that uh we should be as educators keeping our ears out for uh you know what what's the tone what are you hearing these days you know it depends on the students i've been i've been talking to some students in uh in africa man you know they they're so happy to be talked to that their vibe is up like man you know wow zoom you know we can talk about music uh i talk to if i teach i taught a younger class little kids they just you know give them songs to sing and get them involved and stuff man they just happy to have something to do does not just be in their homes now we're stuck at home now we can have a music class we can dance and sing a song but when you get to middle school and high school kids it's a trickier because they have other concerns but my main thing with our kids is don't be spoiled yeah okay this is a rough time it's a pandemic it's rough on your parents people losing jobs there's a lot going on i don't want to hear whining like yeah it's it's stuff it's stuff going on people losing loved ones parents grandparents dying uh a lot of problems in our country we you you see what's going on problems with that we we need the rest is going to be left to you to address so we need you to be much stronger and more creative hey i don't even know how to get on a zoom call help show me how to work this thing you know i'm i'm always dealing with them on a very human level and i love the students and i don't require them to be to figure out everything overnight like we were talking about how sad we were they're not gonna figure it out over but we all we can do is set the standard for them and show the respect and love we have for one another i like to get on my calls with students with another teacher and they have that teacher who i know maybe don't agree with me on everything so they'll come in and say well actually i think it's this oh it's that and then it gives me the opportunity to say it could be that there's not one way for something to be right and yes it could be and it could be for them to see respect and understand and uh to understand that that how much relies on them but they're weirder adults not them we're the adults and it's up to us to set the environment for them i just work in a gas station old guy named bossy clay used to always say boy i've been your age you ain't been mine so we would tease him because he had a funny way of talking and he was always saying we were lazy we didn't do work we didn't know the wheel we were dumb as a carburetor you look at all these kind of lines he would say and then you know you so he was always kind of cussing you out but i always go back to that saying and then make me laugh because he'd be buttering to himself boy you know this is 1960 that gas was like 28 cents a gallon at that time to give you a sense of how long ago it was but i was thinking i've been your age boy you ain't been mine so it's just we said it so i always for my students try to set up positivity uh a belief the need for their creativity and their insight uh the space for them to start to talk and counter state but when we make a decision in this context i'm making this decision because that's my role you know and i think kids they want that i don't think that the whole experiment of adults being run by kids that's not working for us right that's not that's not a good equation i know they're gonna have a better chance for leadership and when their chance comes we want to hope we can bow out gracefully and give them space and we want to hope that they are qualified to reflect the deepest and most sacred and important of our values right we're seeing it played out right now in our electoral much corruption as we have man we have so much corruption in our system all across the line of democrat republic it's a national problem we have that we need to root out and we need to start by teaching our young our most sacred and highest values even if we fall short of them teach that to them and they will respond and our students want that and they'll love us for it later they may not be that enthusiastic right now but that's part of the dynamic of a teacher you think back when we were growing up did we love every teacher did i love what george marx told me i was saying no but he was right i hear you george jansen you remember george dancing my my father was his position so yeah i got to play i got to play in his uno brass quintet years after you moved out i got to play in a little bit and uh benefit from his wisdom oh man i loved him he taught me so much you know many many people yeah he taught many of us so we owe it to him i remember he threw me out of a lesson once you know i wasn't practicing all the little kids would then i was like a junior in high school all the little kids would sit outside the room when i was having a lesson and you know they looked up to me and they have him shout me out of a room and you know that loyola when you open that door all the wooded get out and you know where you talk man that was embarrassing that was one of the most embarrassing things even to this age that i've ever had happening in my life but it was well deserved i went home to my daddy i said man jesse threw me out of the class and he said well did you deserve it i reflected on i said yeah i deserved it he said we'll call him i called him i always called him mr jess hey could i could i come back for lessons next week he said no no don't come back you're not serious and he hung the phone up i told my dad he hung up on me he said give him a little while to cool off you know so i waited a week week and a half i called him back can i come back can i come back for a lesson he said are you are you gonna be prepared are you gonna be ready for lessons i promise i'm gonna be ready he said okay come back in two weeks [Laughter] you know what i mean yeah you know i mean by then i was already working and gigging and you know right you know you know yeah so we need we need you know we need we need that adult hand we are the adult hand we don't need to follow we need to lead well i hope you feel the love and appreciation from the midwest clinic and from our attendees uh it's hearing your thoughts today very helpful to so many uh but i know we've had a chance to have you perform with us and speak to us in person before and and i and we look forward to the opportunity when we can do that again when we get past this virus and can reunite with thousands of us together in celebration of this musical art and of the expression of humanity that you speak of so thank you so much man thank you you know something to see you and how we knew each other in highs in high school high school and the love and respect i have for you and you always like how you are now you know you always had a beautiful spirit and always had kind of a deep spirituality and a passion and i'm not just saying that i could recognize it then and uh i'm so proud of you man and i'm so so proud to be talking to you and for all the all the band directors and everybody you know i love y'all and and we got we we got to go uphill but we just got to all mine that's what we do they just talk about and it's what we do best that's it let's do it let's handle our business well thank you my friend appreciate it very very much all right tone you have a great thanksgiving much love back to you all right grandpa all right sir you take care all right much love babe yeah you're right we as citizens have to become more involved i believe in participating this is a democracy we get to present our views and fight over what we think should be and sometimes you win fights and sometimes you lose them the fact that we as citizens are not acute in our understanding of our way of government and the people that we put in charge in both parties we're being exploited we're being made of full love we need to take the time to figure out what's going on and what that what what is the extent of our power and we need to wield it education is tied to aspiration get the music that is going to require you to learn something and when you're teaching yourself teach your students and then they will be better off but the most important thing for us to do is to teach our students how to think and to perceive symbolically because music is a symbolic language when a community invests in the arts and an arts education and the things that we've been talking about symbolic mythology and meaning and history and these things they're more likely to be enlightened informed and they're more more likely to be friendly to other people and that's very very important the more ignorant you are the more you're going to be hostile to strangers and for all the band directors and everybody i love you all much love babe yeah you're right

Channel: Midwest Clinic International Band, Orchestra and Music Conference

Views: 1,211

Rating: 4.8857141 out of 5

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Id: 38WPQN5vUc8

Length: 44min 48sec (2688 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2021