| If Wynton had never said a word in the media, never given a speech, there would be Wynton statues lining the streets. There would be a Wynton-appreciation forum on this site. Granted, is Wynton the first thing I listen to in the morning and the last at night? No, but there is very intelligent, very exciting music to be found. He's pumped out so many albums that some are bound to not get everyone's blood rushing, but hey, that's life.
Check out the live at the vanguard seven-cd set. Try to imagine the music as if you had never heard stanley crouch promote it; as if Wynton had never spoken out against hip-hop or fusion; and then tell me that it's "not honest" or "it doesn't swing."
I am not passing judgment on what he says one way or another. Wynton has four careers: one is as a public intellectual, a dying and much-needed art. Marsalis is an intelligent, learn-ed provocateur in a sense, trying to goad culture where he wants to goad it. The second is as an educator and supporter/discoverer/nurturer/impresario of new talent. The third is as a trumpet player, the fourth as a composer.
Of course they overlap, but we forget that the person playing in the house of tribes (have you HEARD that album?) or blues alley is not the person addressing the National Endowment for the Humanities or whatever. I'm not taking a side one side or another on what he says, but I think it is expressed intelligently. It's garden variety jealousy, alot of the criticism around him, and alot of the more knee-jerk criticism of his classical playing shows a really unimaginative sense of what music can be ("this is inapprorpriate to the music because monettes didn't exist in Tomasi's time") or show frankly troubling racial overtones. |