‘Like a big gumbo pot’

The way Branford Marsalis sees it, the world needs social activists and artists. Yet the Grammy-winning saxophonist said he has a hard time doing both.

“Playing music is so hard — I don’t really have time for (activism),” Marsalis told an audience Thursday in the Joan and Sanford Weill Hall’s Annenberg Auditorium at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. “I mean, I have the things that I think about, but I have to practice every day and I’m constantly listening to music. … I don’t know how you square those two things.”

The talk, sandwiched between two gigs with the University Musical Society — one jazz, the other classical — was billed as “Branford Marsalis: A life of art and engagement.” Marsalis seems most comfortable engaging with his audience through his art.

“Music is about people — it’s not about music,” he said. “This is where we get disconnected from reality. There’s a lot of musicians who think that music is about music, which is why people don’t like them.”

Branford Marsalis talks music with the author, fellow musician Jeff Karoub. (Image: Andrew Mascharka, Michigan Photography.)

Marsalis, whose career has spanned the genres of jazz, classical, pop, funk, and more, isn’t ignorant of what’s happening — or has happened — across the globe. The man for whom history was his favorite subject in school is currently reading “Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Rule the World” by Anne Applebaum.

You have to know what’s going on in the world, the New Orleans native says, and understand it in the context of human history. And all you learn and know can certainly find its way into your music, but he thinks of it in terms of conveying emotion and feeling, moreso than facts.

“Music is like a big gumbo pot and the better you are at it, you can throw more things in the pot and it will taste better,” he said. “And you’re not going to taste all these things individually. And then people say, ‘Well, man, give me that recipe,’ because they can’t taste all of those things individually.

“And that’s the way music is. All these influences, all these disparate influences, kind of add a certain kind of gravitas and density to your playing, but not in a direct way. You can point and say, ‘Oh, yeah, he’s listening to the Grateful Dead. Yeah, I could tell.’ No, it’s just it’s just part of the soup.”

Marsalis, whose many musical collaborations include the Dead, Sonny Rollins, and Sting, has also spent decades as an educator. He recognizes that each form of music comes with its own cultural roots and lessons worth learning, but he balks at purists who build walls between them. Jimi Hendrix and Wolgang Amadeus Mozart may not sound the same but they “use the same 12 notes” of the Western scale.

Marsalis, once a late night show bandleader whose accomplished musical family includes trumpeter brother, Wynton, was adamant that his job is “to make music,” but understands the power it can possess beyond the notes.

His interviewer was Philippa Pham Hughes, a visiting artist at the University of Michigan Museum of Art and a lecturer at the Ford School, which presented the talk. She cited the words of David Wojnarowicz, an artist and AIDS activist, who said the job of artists is to create beauty in the world.

“We don’t have to be on the front lines of everything,” Hughes said. “Our act of resistance is to continue making art and make it great and fight for a world in which art can exist and beauty can surround all of us.”

“Yeah, all right,” Marsalis said, “I’ll buy that.”
 
 
Lead image: Philippa Pham Hughes, a visiting artist at the University of Michigan Museum of Art and a lecturer at the Ford School of Public Policy, interviews Branford Marsalis at the Ford School Feb. 20. Marsalis performed two concerts presented by the University Musical Society during his trip to Ann Arbor. He went classical with the Branford Marsalis Chamber Project Feb. 21, and  jazzy with the Branford Marsalis Quartet Feb. 19. (Image: Andrew Mascharka, Michigan Photography.)