“In this book I hope to reach a new audience with the positive message of America’s greatest music, to show how great musicians demonstrate on the bandstand a mutual respect and trust that can alter your outlook on the world and enrich every aspect of your life-from individual creativity and personal relationships to conducting business and understanding what it means to be American in the most modern sense.”
- Wynton Marsalis
In this beautiful book, the Pulitzer Prize-winning musician and composer explores jazz and how an understanding of it can lead to deeper, more original ways of being, living, and relating-for individuals, communities, and nations. Marsalis shows us how to listen to jazz, and through stories about his life and the lessons he has learned from other music greats, he reveals how the central ideas in jazz can influence the way people think and even how they behave with others, changing self, family, and community for the better.
Marsalis is passionate about this book: it is response to our country’s divided political and cultural environment, and his message-bringing people together through swing-has always been his professional mission. Marsalis claims that “culture” is the one only thing that can unify a society, yet our leaders and politicians fail to address it. He argues that jazz can help us realize the potential of ourselves and of our country, providing many working metaphors for successful contemporary democratic engagement.
Date: Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Time: 6:00 -8:00 PM
Location: Hue-Man Bookstore, 2319 Federick Douglas Blvd, (Btwn. 124th & 125th Sts.)
If you can’t make it to the bookstor but want to see what Marsalis has to say about the book, click here for an online interview.
