Branford Marsalis: "Can We Really Use the Word 'Important' for Something That the Majority of the People Have Never Heard?"

Publication: Seattle Weekly Blogs
Author: Chris Kornelis
Date: August 30, 2011

Earlier today I had a long chat with saxophonist Branford Marsalis, who just released, with the piano player Joey Calderazzo, Songs of Mirth and Melancholy—an album of instrumentals played with a warmth and melody usually the domain of vocalists. But Marsalis was much more interested in discussing general ideas related to jazz and pop music than he was pitching his new record (though he certainly thinks very highly of it).

Many of Marsalis’ comments directed at the jazz community could just as easily be applied to the insular “world inside a world” you can find inside the indie rockosphere, to say nothing of punk, pop, and hip-hop. He’s got a point: If the most important music being made today isn’t reaching an audience, is it really important?

Here’s an excerpt from our chat:

Marsalis: I have a lot of normal friends. ‘Cause it’s important. [New York is] a weird city where actors date actors, lawyers date lawyers, musicians date musicians, it’s real strange that way. You have a bunch of musicians talking about music and they talk about what’s good and what’s not good, and they don’t consider the larger context of it, and the larger context of it is that, you know … You read a review of something and some guy in New York says, “This is the most important music since such and such.” And then when you look at it in a larger context you say, “Well, can we really use the word ‘important’ for something that the majority of the people have never heard?” People have heard John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. People have heard Miles Davis Kind of Blue.

So, we get into this, where we have a world inside of the world. But as I’ve started to extend and get more back into the outside world—which really started when I was on The Tonight Show—it was one of those things when you realize, “Man, nobody knows who the fuck were are.”

And the idea was not to do things to make them know, but the question is within the context of the music I’ve chosen to play, is there a way we can play this music—what are the things that normal people like about music and can we incorporate those things?