# Jazz anticipated this moment – Wynton Marsalis on Black Lives Matter and the power of music: Videos, Photos
- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2020/09/13/jazz-anticipated-this-moment-wynton-marsalis-on-black-lives-matter-and-the-power-of-music-videos-photos/
- Published: 2020-09-13T16:46:19+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU
**The Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and trumpeter on how music can highlight and
heal the divisions in society and bring us closer together.**
Jazz legend Wynton Marsalis has talked about the genre’s unique power to raise up
Black communities and bring people together, in an exclusive interview …
After months of heightened racial tensions in the United States following the death
of George Floyd, the trumpeter says the jazz movement has always anticipated this
moment and offers communities an opportunity for education, sophistication and an
understanding of a shared cultural heritage.
Marsalis’ new release, The Ever Fonky Lowdown, is a work of opera and musical theatre
where the protagonist, a carnival hustler, plays a series of games to create divisions
and suspicions in a group, and tells the tale of how to manipulate and hustle people.
“It reminds me of the New Orleans caste system: White, Creole, Black,” Marsalis
says.
The work was premiered at Lincoln Center in 2018, but its themes of cultural division
and a system that thrives on mistrust feel particularly resonant in 2020.
Wynton Marsalis and The Jazz at the Lincoln Center Orchestra, in concert in February
2020.
**‘Why do we always have to be the fool?’**
“Martin Luther King, at the 1964 Berlin Jazz Festival, said ‘artists many times
anticipate what’s going on’. And we’ve been anticipating. We’ve been saying: what
about some sophistication? Why do we always have to be the fool?”
A game is being played in creating racialised divisions, Marsalis says. “Let’s trot
some people out and blame them for some stuff. They become a sacrifice and that
alleviates anxiety in a community.”
⌊Wynton Marsalis speaks about Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra before a Chicago
residency. - Chicago Tribune⌉⌊Wynton Marsalis speaks about Jazz at Lincoln Center
Orchestra before a Chicago residency. - Chicago Tribune⌉He says in _The Ever Fonky
Lowdown_, he wanted to explore exploitation and human suffering, and speak to the
white communities who are the subject of this exploitation. “It’s a blueprint for
the basic voter to open their eyes, and for a person in society to ask ‘what is
the game that’s being played?’”
Over the years, Marsalis has crafted a musical career that has spanned genres, famously
winning jazz and classical Grammy Awards in 1983, and combined elements across the
musical spectrum. In 1997, Marsalis became the first jazz musician to win the Pulitzer
Prize for Music with his oratorio _Blood on the Fields_.
In the music of _The Ever Fonky Lowdown_, the 58-year-old virtuoso returns to his
1970s New Orleans musical roots with a funk-infused score with layers of swing,
R&B, Afro-Latin and gospel.
“In this piece, we play the kind of music I played when I was growing up… it’s influenced
by the type of lines my father and a great drummer James Black would write and the
songs they’d play in the 60s and early 70s,” he says.
Ellis Marsalis, Wynton’s father and patriarch of the Marsalis family musical dynasty,
died in April after being admitted to hospital with COVID-19 symptoms.
The music and beat of ‘The Ever Fonky Lowdown’, by Wynton Marsalis.
_The Ever Fonky Lowdown _can be seen as part of a series of works over the decades
that explore social history, race and cultural mythology. 1985’s _Black Codes (From
the Underground),_ _Blood on the Fields _and_ 2007’s From the Plantation to the
Penitentiary._
In January of this year, violinist Nicola Benedetti won a Grammy for her recording
of Marsalis’ Violin Concerto and Fiddle Dance Suite.
**‘The government needs to invest in arts’**
Wynton Marsalis on the importance of the arts.
As well as being a composer, Marsalis is the Managing and Artistic Director at Jazz
at Lincoln Center. In an arts world crippled by closures, cancellations, and empty
auditoriums, Marsalis said that government’s first priority is to keep people safe,
calling for “intelligence and responsibility”, especially given the age of many
concert audiences.
He also called for greater investment in the arts and education, citing Germany
as a model for arts funding.
“Most governments are driven by business and they turn politics into a business.
We have to put pressure on governments around the world to invest in civics: in
education, in health, and in arts,” he says.
“That will allow us to come closer together, be more healthy and be more informed.”
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[https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=343641930104796&extid=xAveF5735zQnsP85](https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=343641930104796&extid=xAveF5735zQnsP85)
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