Speaker 1: I've loved jazz ever since I was a little boy,
Speaker 1: and part of what makes it so unique is that
Speaker 1: it's like any other form of music. There is a tune,
Speaker 1: you have to know, a key, you've got to play
Speaker 1: it in a chord structure you have to follow. But
Speaker 1: to be really faithful to jazz, you have to both
Speaker 1: stay within those parameters and make things up a little
Speaker 1: as you go along. To make the most of a song,
Speaker 1: you've got to both play it and create out of it.
Speaker 1: So why am I telling you this? I've been thinking
Speaker 1: about that a lot over the last several months as
Speaker 1: we've been living through these unprecedented times. We've all been
Speaker 1: forced to improvise. But if we can do it in
Speaker 1: harmony with one another, we have the chance to reimagine
Speaker 1: what our entire society looks like and how it operates,
Speaker 1: and come out on the other side of this as
Speaker 1: a more inclusive, kinder, equitable, and successful nation. If there's
Speaker 1: no better art form to explain these times in jazz,
Speaker 1: then I'm very lucky to have with me today one
Speaker 1: of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, my longtime
Speaker 1: friend went to Marsalis. Wenten is arguably the greatest trumpeter alive.
Speaker 1: He's won nine Grammys. He's the only artist ever to
Speaker 1: win Grammys in the same year for both jazz and
Speaker 1: classical records, and he did it twice. In his early twenties,
Speaker 1: he became the first jazz musician to receive the Fuel
Speaker 1: of Surprise from Music. He's received both the National Medal
Speaker 1: of Arts and the National Humanities Medal, and performed for
Speaker 1: Hillary and Me at the White House that one of
Speaker 1: our national Millennium events with Marion McPartland. The main guest
Speaker 1: was President Buckliffe Hovel of the Czech Republic. He led
Speaker 1: perhaps the only peaceful revolution in the world, powered by jazz.
Speaker 1: They met in the Jazz Clubs. It's co founder of
Speaker 1: Jazz at the Lincoln Center. Wentn't has helped to grow
Speaker 1: the global jazz community through performance, advocacy, and education. He's
Speaker 1: a passionate champion of equality and social justice, constantly using
Speaker 1: his gifts to celebrate our common humanity and to show
Speaker 1: us what we can do if we work together. That's
Speaker 1: true more than anything else, and two of his most
Speaker 1: recent works, The Democracy Suite and The ever Funky Lowdown.
Speaker 1: I've been Blessed to know went in for more than
Speaker 1: twenty five years now, and I've had a lot of
Speaker 1: chances to listen to and to learn from him. I
Speaker 1: come away from every performance or conversation knowing I have
Speaker 1: learned from listening, and knowing now I have a deeper
Speaker 1: appreciation for jazz, for America, for the human experience, and
Speaker 1: for Winting Marsalis. I very I had to talk to
Speaker 1: him now went and welcome. Yes, sir, it's a great pleasure,
Speaker 1: on of course, to sit out and talk with you,
Speaker 1: as it always is. So thank you for that that
Speaker 1: very flowery introduction and all those all those kind acones.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I remember once I was talking to you
Speaker 1: on the phone and I asked you how much of
Speaker 1: your great gift was God given and how much it
Speaker 1: was his work. And I told you a story about
Speaker 1: how I decided not to become a musician when I
Speaker 1: was sixteen. I looked in the mirror and I said,
Speaker 1: I'm happier playing my saxophone than anything I've ever done.
Speaker 1: But no matter how hard I work, I'll never be
Speaker 1: as good as Cold Frank. And uh, you said something
Speaker 1: to me about Cold frand I'll never forget. You said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true, but he said, don't underestimate hard work. And
Speaker 1: you sent me a tape of Coltrane playing at age seventeen.
Speaker 1: You remember that, Remember that he said he's flapped half
Speaker 1: the time. And I listened to you and I realized
Speaker 1: that was true, and how much better he got the
Speaker 1: longer he lived. And then I realized that at seventeen
Speaker 1: and flat, he was better than I ever thought about.
Speaker 1: I love that you re ready's today tap of him
Speaker 1: in the navy, that's right. But he I think he
Speaker 1: gave my seventeen or nineteen. Yeah, well, you know, we
Speaker 1: like to We like the joke. But I always love
Speaker 1: the fact that you you played, and you brought that
Speaker 1: consciousness to people, you know, And I think that that's
Speaker 1: one thing that's been truly been lost and our political discourse,
Speaker 1: looking at all the debates, everything that's going on, and
Speaker 1: you take the pick the years you want. Did the
Speaker 1: power of our arts and the American arts to heal us,
Speaker 1: to bring us together? The virtuosity of the artists, the
Speaker 1: kind of hipness and the soulfulness of a Coltrane. None
Speaker 1: of us are gonna play like Train. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: Train was was what Train was. But the fact that
Speaker 1: we know John Coltrane, and we know what I Love
Speaker 1: Supreme is, and we know what jazz is. It was
Speaker 1: always kind of a binding thing, like, yes, Coltrane had
Speaker 1: prodigious talent, but he didn't he wasn't like Charlie Parker,
Speaker 1: and he felt like he had no talent. And yes,
Speaker 1: Coltrane worked this behind off and he became much much
Speaker 1: better as the years past. Those two things are always
Speaker 1: true about him. And it was also true as it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you will practice and be as great as
Speaker 1: him in terms of whatever you're aspiring to. But in
Speaker 1: jazz you can achieve the sound of your person. Nothing
Speaker 1: keeps you from achieving that. It's just depends on what
Speaker 1: your definition of virtuosity is. And I know the things
Speaker 1: you learned just from being a jazz musician, once you
Speaker 1: were able to apply them to all the other things
Speaker 1: that you knew, that just made you so much stronger
Speaker 1: in dealing with other people. Because jazz is a very
Speaker 1: empathetic music. We've often talked about her. Jazz is more
Speaker 1: than just America's original unique art form, but really it's
Speaker 1: the music of democracy at its best, and as you've said,
Speaker 1: part of america mythology At what point in your career
Speaker 1: did you think about the connection of jazz to democracy
Speaker 1: and what prompted you to do it. I think early on,
Speaker 1: because I grew up with a jazz musician and always
Speaker 1: hearing my father and the other musicians talk about America,
Speaker 1: and also my my father's viewpoint. He was always in
Speaker 1: the barbershop arguing against points of view that we all
Speaker 1: had in the seventies. That was the Black Power time
Speaker 1: and the kind of first time black people had a voice,
Speaker 1: and the younger people we had our afros and our
Speaker 1: our platform shoes and all the things that we had,
Speaker 1: and we were all talking in the same way that
Speaker 1: we had been talked to. And my father was always
Speaker 1: so so even minded. At that time, of course it
Speaker 1: was an embarrassment to me, but he was always speaking
Speaker 1: for against racism, against retaliation against people, always at a
Speaker 1: very deep spiritual connection to the human condition as a whole.
Speaker 1: He always was talking about larger thoughts and that was
Speaker 1: not what we were thinking about. So I always connected
Speaker 1: jazz to a democracy through him and other jazz musicians.
Speaker 1: What do you make of this last selection? Is that
Speaker 1: an affirmation of our common humanity or a reaffirmation of
Speaker 1: our deep divisions. You know, I think that is both
Speaker 1: it ties into what we were talking about with jazz
Speaker 1: because it just so so happens at the fact that
Speaker 1: we have the type of diversity we have in our democracy,
Speaker 1: uh is making it hard to undermine the will of
Speaker 1: the voter, and we have that with in jazz bands,
Speaker 1: with an individual who is improvising, with the collective of
Speaker 1: the group playing a written part or improvising. A lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff we do is by choice. The rhythm
Speaker 1: section is considered to be the back line and the
Speaker 1: horns are called the front line, but the rhythm section
Speaker 1: defines the music. So we have horn players versus a
Speaker 1: rhythm section versus us as a group, and we find
Speaker 1: that dynamic playing out. That's interesting that the states are now,
Speaker 1: regardless of party, upon you to be loyal to government,
Speaker 1: regardless of party, and that has a lot in common
Speaker 1: with jazz because a single solos can stand up and
Speaker 1: play thirty minutes a solo themselves, and the band has
Speaker 1: to has to police what's going on, it has to choose. Hey,
Speaker 1: it's it's six of us up here. You can't play
Speaker 1: a thirty minute solo if you're a drummer. You're okay,
Speaker 1: you have the loudest instrument, but no one can hear
Speaker 1: anything but drums, so we see. I don't know, I'm
Speaker 1: giving you kind of long, long answer. But this election
Speaker 1: and all of this is so so so full of
Speaker 1: implication because, as you know, a democracy is not a
Speaker 1: given in the world, no, and they're very hard to preserve.
Speaker 1: Ours has been around a long time, and people take
Speaker 1: a lot of things for granted once it's been around
Speaker 1: a long time, and so everybody levels around the edges
Speaker 1: to take advantage of getting what they want until pretty
Speaker 1: seting the foundations are weak, and I think that's what's
Speaker 1: happening to us, but this could be strengthening. One of
Speaker 1: the things I liked about ever funking lowdown is that
Speaker 1: you basically talk about how this divisiveness its us in
Speaker 1: them world is kind of like a drug. You you
Speaker 1: get addicted to it. You've got to be against something
Speaker 1: in somebody, and reconciliation takes is harder work. I remember
Speaker 1: I spent three billion dollars of the American people's tax
Speaker 1: money to sequence the human genome, and the most important
Speaker 1: thing we learned from a political and social point of
Speaker 1: view is that we're all nine and nine and a
Speaker 1: half per cents the same, but we spend nine and
Speaker 1: nine and a half a percent of our time focusing
Speaker 1: on the half of percent. Now, to turn everything into
Speaker 1: a zero sum game is a bad way to run
Speaker 1: a railroad or a country. And I see you trying
Speaker 1: to be a force for reconciliation, and I think that
Speaker 1: live in a time where, in different ways, almost all
Speaker 1: of us are being programmed right for division right. And
Speaker 1: you know, when you look at the religious traditions, if
Speaker 1: we look into Junior Christian traditional, what the devil does,
Speaker 1: the devil symbolically simplifies. So for those who may not
Speaker 1: believe in in that religion or have a different belief system,
Speaker 1: it's a simplification to take all nuances out and give
Speaker 1: you a non choice choice, and then the ever funky lowdown.
Speaker 1: That's what Mr Game does. He points out that there
Speaker 1: are others. Then he tells you what's wrong with them.
Speaker 1: I think I heard that they've been committing the various
Speaker 1: climes and they don't believe in God. Then he says
Speaker 1: you have to beat them. We must strike first to
Speaker 1: prevent what they may be trying to do to us,
Speaker 1: and to save them, and the ever funky lowdown is
Speaker 1: when you've beaten them. He says, losers want to be winners.
Speaker 1: He speaks in the terms of losers and winners. And
Speaker 1: then what the losers have to do is they have
Speaker 1: to accommodate the winner's vision of them. Let me take
Speaker 1: you back to the school yard. Most kids just give
Speaker 1: in and follow the bully, but a few back away,
Speaker 1: threatening some type of retaliation. Whether subservient or resistant, each
Speaker 1: will adjust their philosophy to accommodate defeat. That's the illusion
Speaker 1: of choice, the old binary hustle. Let's see versus who too,
Speaker 1: God fearing versus heathens, Democrats versus Republicans. Yes, there are
Speaker 1: two sides to every coin, but it's still the same coin.
Speaker 1: Losers have two choices. Entertain us by playing out our
Speaker 1: vision of them as meek, emasculated justice or excite us
Speaker 1: playing out our vision of them as dangerous, captured savages.
Speaker 1: It's much more provocative when you when you begin to
Speaker 1: attack people or attack something. But still, if you take
Speaker 1: the most brilliant of all of us, we still don't
Speaker 1: know anything in relation to what there is to be known,
Speaker 1: because we can't rise above whatever our press active may
Speaker 1: happen to be. The problem of human living requires more
Speaker 1: than the vision of a single person, whoever that person is.
Speaker 1: We say in our trumpets section, it's four of us
Speaker 1: and one of our trumpet players we were going to
Speaker 1: play a party was written for me, but he would
Speaker 1: have been much better playing it. His name is Marcus
Speaker 1: print Up. So when I said, I think Printaple played
Speaker 1: this part much better, we all knew he would. So
Speaker 1: the catch of the band all started laughing, Oh, give
Speaker 1: it to print You're scared to play your part. You're
Speaker 1: scared to play the part. And Printer said, well, it's
Speaker 1: four of us back here, and we all have different
Speaker 1: things we do, but if you put the four of
Speaker 1: us together, we make one hell of a trumpet player.
Speaker 1: So it's like to conceive of the talent that we
Speaker 1: have in the world or in the United States of America,
Speaker 1: that we only have a vision of how to keep
Speaker 1: other people down or beat up on people who don't
Speaker 1: have agency, and people with the most agency in the
Speaker 1: society spent a lot of that time figuring out how
Speaker 1: to how to work on a sophisticated kleptocracy. And that's
Speaker 1: on both sides of the coin instead of figuring out
Speaker 1: how a free to potential in all the power we
Speaker 1: have and bringing us together and using our intellectual firepower,
Speaker 1: spiritual firepower, and the best of our tradition. Because the
Speaker 1: best of our tradition is us coming together. We should
Speaker 1: never forget even something that's divisive as race relations. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a Southerner. I grew up with great
Speaker 1: uh prejudice and ignorance and in segregation. I don't play
Speaker 1: around with it. I never joke or act like it
Speaker 1: wasn't for real. It's for real, and it was for real.
Speaker 1: But when I look through my own history, can I
Speaker 1: honestly say I didn't have white Americas that said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm with you in this struggle. And I think that
Speaker 1: our mythology hurts us as a nation because whenever there's
Speaker 1: something negative, it's picked upon and it's spread and the
Speaker 1: legacy of success that we've had has to be used
Speaker 1: to combat all of the many failures we've had. Harmony,
Speaker 1: that's right, harmony. My little brother asked me what is
Speaker 1: the opposite of disharmony, and I said, unison. Wow, So
Speaker 1: we started to laugh. We started to laugh about it
Speaker 1: because because because dis harmony and chaos. When you talk
Speaker 1: about dis harmony and chaos, uh, the you you would
Speaker 1: think that the opposite of it is harmony, But actually
Speaker 1: the opposite of it is unison because everybody playing the
Speaker 1: same thing. That's also what you do not want. You
Speaker 1: don't want everybody having the same opinion. You want to
Speaker 1: be forced to harmonize with people, to make choices to
Speaker 1: go in and out in harmony is one of the
Speaker 1: greatest arts of music. I wanted, asked Lenda Bernstein about harmony.
Speaker 1: I'd read his his class on harmony of the Young
Speaker 1: People's Council. He said, Man, that's the most difficult thing
Speaker 1: to to describe, he said, because harmony is like a
Speaker 1: conversation in which a person is the center of the
Speaker 1: conversation in one moment and their point of view is
Speaker 1: absolutely of no interest. They have to become active as listeners,
Speaker 1: he said. So in harmony progression, you know, at one
Speaker 1: point a note C may be the root of the
Speaker 1: card and the most important thing, he said, But the
Speaker 1: very next second that may be a flat thirteen of
Speaker 1: some upper extension of the of the harmony. And then
Speaker 1: on the next it may be a note that does
Speaker 1: not even sound. So it's it's an art that it's vertical.
Speaker 1: It lays out in blocks, and it's horizon, it lays
Speaker 1: out in time. So I think, Uh, yeah, what you're
Speaker 1: saying about harmony, it's it's a very complex thing to
Speaker 1: teach and to understand more with my guests went to
Speaker 1: Marsalis after this. Let me ask you about another recent
Speaker 1: fist you did, the Democracy Suite. Uh, what did you
Speaker 1: want the message to be? And if jazz loving policeman
Speaker 1: in New York hered it, how would you like him
Speaker 1: to feel? Um, I would like him to feel that
Speaker 1: he's a part of a great ongoing process that needs
Speaker 1: his industry and his energy to take us to a
Speaker 1: higher and better place that he may want to go in.
Speaker 1: One of my best friends in the world was a
Speaker 1: Chicago City policeman in what Chicago. I was the best
Speaker 1: man in his wedding, Officer Tony Parker, and Uh, we
Speaker 1: were good friends. We are good friends and will will
Speaker 1: be good friends for life. And we've argued the kind
Speaker 1: of police abuse and arguing and all the stuff that
Speaker 1: goes on. And I think that it's it's important for
Speaker 1: us to understand that corruption exists everywhere in the system,
Speaker 1: and and for us to not give people who are
Speaker 1: not corrupt put them in a place where they have
Speaker 1: to co sign corruption, but also to not act like
Speaker 1: we don't know that there is corruption. So I think
Speaker 1: in the Democracy Suite, I deal with all things that
Speaker 1: we all have dealt with in this time. Spotlight on
Speaker 1: one of the movements in the Democracy Suite that dance
Speaker 1: we do that you know we love to do, and
Speaker 1: that's about all the different protests around the world where
Speaker 1: people found a solidarity with with Brianna Taylor, George Floyd.
Speaker 1: They found that because the people everyone in the world
Speaker 1: can can identify with not having agency and not having
Speaker 1: power and being abused by an individual or group that
Speaker 1: does have power. So I tried to not simplify by
Speaker 1: things into black white issues or right wrong issues, but
Speaker 1: I try to try to bring nuances in that way
Speaker 1: to to the dance we do. Even in the course
Speaker 1: of protests and people hitting tambourines, playing grooves, singing, infect
Speaker 1: your songs, and it does not make the song less
Speaker 1: serious or less for real and keeping their slogans black
Speaker 1: lives matter. It's not less real than we shall overcome.
Speaker 1: The one kind of somber movement. It's not even somber.
Speaker 1: It's called Deeper than dreams, and it's about all of
Speaker 1: us who lost loved ones during this period that you
Speaker 1: didn't get a chance to say goodbye to your loved one.
Speaker 1: That transcends all politics and all other things. So I
Speaker 1: tell my friends sometimes they say, man, I h you
Speaker 1: know I can't sleep at night. I said, well, that's
Speaker 1: the old folks coming to you. They're coming to you
Speaker 1: because they y'all have to heal in a space that's
Speaker 1: deeper than dreams. Uh. You lost your dad earlier this
Speaker 1: year to COVID. Uh. We had a good, long life
Speaker 1: and left a remarkable legacy, and you and his other sons.
Speaker 1: From the first time I ever heard about you, listen
Speaker 1: to your brother Branford player. I've always been fascinated by
Speaker 1: your family story and the role your father played, and
Speaker 1: the letter you wrote in tribute to him was one
Speaker 1: of the most moving things I think I ever read,
Speaker 1: and all the more powerful for saying that your hurt
Speaker 1: was no more valid or stronger than that of so
Speaker 1: many others who lost people, which I think your dad
Speaker 1: also said, not long for it. So tell us about
Speaker 1: him and what impact he had on your growing up
Speaker 1: and on your life and what impact is loss has
Speaker 1: had on what you do now? Well, you know, for
Speaker 1: I appreciate you your comments on him. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was my man, you know, went from the time I
Speaker 1: was born as like I hung with him and it
Speaker 1: was not glamorous like he was just he was a guy.
Speaker 1: My father was not a a physical guy, heroic wanting
Speaker 1: to whatever strike want to strike people or be uh.
Speaker 1: He was very philosophical person who who when he was
Speaker 1: growing up. He told me he had gotten bullied by
Speaker 1: people because that wasn't his personality. And I learned more
Speaker 1: about what it meant to be a human being just
Speaker 1: watching him. He talked to everybody the same. If he
Speaker 1: had the chance to meet you, he would be honest.
Speaker 1: He would be just as respectful as he would with
Speaker 1: a homeless person in the street. He would talk to
Speaker 1: homeless cats and come back, man, this cat had an
Speaker 1: interesting story. You see. He used to be an architect.
Speaker 1: He could go into the whole thing that he had
Speaker 1: talked about. And I saw my father playing empty clubs
Speaker 1: for for the seventeen years I lived with him. I
Speaker 1: saw him be in situations that would humiliate any person.
Speaker 1: Each handled it all with racy sophistication. He studied, he practiced,
Speaker 1: he taught. He was a person of the community. He
Speaker 1: played for no people. He played just as hard to
Speaker 1: an empty room as he would play for people. I
Speaker 1: always tell the one story, I never really liked jazz
Speaker 1: growing up. I was just always I like to be
Speaker 1: in clubs and here older people down on their luck.
Speaker 1: Here the stuff they talked about, all the kind of
Speaker 1: nasty talking things that went on. So I always loved
Speaker 1: being in an environment. And I was fortunate to be
Speaker 1: in the environment because I was with him. I knew
Speaker 1: how to be quiet, how to just be in my space.
Speaker 1: But I loved that. I did not like the music
Speaker 1: that much. When I started to get into the music,
Speaker 1: I was eleven or going into being twelve, and he
Speaker 1: played in the club called Lewin Charlie's, and it was
Speaker 1: late at night. He closed the club up. There was
Speaker 1: nobody in this club but one man who was drunk.
Speaker 1: And I went to my father and I said, man,
Speaker 1: let's go. You know, it's two o'clock, it's only me
Speaker 1: and you. Let's let's look this guy here. He was drunk,
Speaker 1: and we looked out into the club. Empty club nobody
Speaker 1: in it. My father playing at piano. My father looks
Speaker 1: at me and he he says, Man, this gig against
Speaker 1: at two thirty and to thirty. Man, let's get this
Speaker 1: guy out of here and close up. Charlie is the
Speaker 1: old club on it. Charlie is gone. Let's let's go home.
Speaker 1: We had a thirty minute drive home. My daddy told me, man,
Speaker 1: sit your ass down and listen to some music for
Speaker 1: a change. So it actually was. It was actually funny
Speaker 1: because it's only meet him. So I actually sat down
Speaker 1: and for all the years of being in the club,
Speaker 1: then I guess since I was two years old, I've
Speaker 1: been in clubs, it's the first time I really just
Speaker 1: really listened to him playing. Now. Of course, I grew
Speaker 1: up here in practice, so his song was a part
Speaker 1: of my life. I looked around that club and I thought,
Speaker 1: what makes a person do what this man is doing?
Speaker 1: Playing for no people it two in the morning, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know that that shaped my life, like just the
Speaker 1: integrity he showed. And he played a pile of piano
Speaker 1: in that thirty minutes. And then I said to myself,
Speaker 1: I wonder if I could learn how to play like him,
Speaker 1: because I mainly teased him at because he was such
Speaker 1: a serious man. I was always joking with him, even
Speaker 1: the last conversation I had with him before he before
Speaker 1: he went in the hospital and then he died a
Speaker 1: few days after that. I was teasing and messing with
Speaker 1: him and always kind of joking, joking with him that
Speaker 1: I could play better than him piano. I played my
Speaker 1: piano and play some ones, you know, start playing some
Speaker 1: courts like him. This just favorite chord. He would play
Speaker 1: this big six nine chord. So you always played and
Speaker 1: you go. He always played those kind of little phrases.
Speaker 1: I would start playing him and said, man, you better
Speaker 1: look out. I'm coming for you. So yeah, I remember,
Speaker 1: I remember that night. And there's so many other things.
Speaker 1: My daddy was so fair with people, and he had
Speaker 1: such integrity about things. You couldn't buy him out. He
Speaker 1: didn't remember. When I made a little money. I was
Speaker 1: twenty one twenty two. I said, man, let me get
Speaker 1: your house. He said, man, you you felipe. I don't
Speaker 1: need you to get me a house. I'm comfortable in
Speaker 1: my own house. So he he was just philosophically. If
Speaker 1: you were if you acted small, or you did something
Speaker 1: that was small. He would call you on it. He
Speaker 1: hated for you to call people them. He said, who
Speaker 1: is they? Man? Who is they? That's why I wrote
Speaker 1: a movement and the ever fun get Down called they
Speaker 1: because he tell me who they are? Do you know them?
Speaker 1: What's their name? And so many other things I could
Speaker 1: tell you. I mean, I just he was. He was
Speaker 1: such a he was such a big person. I remember once.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just tell you this one last story to
Speaker 1: just about who he was. When I first came to
Speaker 1: New York, I started to get a lot of publicity,
Speaker 1: and I talked a lot. So the older musicians really
Speaker 1: didn't like me. And I was always talking about the
Speaker 1: integrity and music and all these things that were far
Speaker 1: beyond what my playing earned me the write to talk about.
Speaker 1: From a philosophical standpoint, what I was saying was not inaccurate,
Speaker 1: but I shouldn't have been saying it, you know. And
Speaker 1: I went back to New Orleans to play a gig,
Speaker 1: and my father always let me see there with him,
Speaker 1: and then this gig he did, he didn't call me
Speaker 1: up on the band stand. So the whole time I
Speaker 1: was standing the man I was I was getting, I said,
Speaker 1: he just like these other musicians in New York. Then finally,
Speaker 1: on the last tune, he brought me up on the
Speaker 1: band stand. I was dealing with all kind of emotion
Speaker 1: and angry at him that he was mad because I
Speaker 1: had become successful and uh so I played and as
Speaker 1: we were walking off the band stand, thinking all the
Speaker 1: stuff I was thinking, my father put his arm around
Speaker 1: me and he said, man, I'm sorry about my rhythm section.
Speaker 1: I really didn't want to call you up at all.
Speaker 1: So I started laughing. I told him, but I said, man,
Speaker 1: I was thinking so many small thoughts. And he just
Speaker 1: looked at me and shook his head. He said, boy,
Speaker 1: this cat so you know he was Yeah, he was.
Speaker 1: He was. He was a good person. I mean he
Speaker 1: had a good heart and a good, good feeling to him.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Hi, this is Bill Clinton. I
Speaker 1: hope you're enjoying. Why am I telling you this? After
Speaker 1: leaving the White House, I wanted to keep working on
Speaker 1: issues I cared about where I believed I could still
Speaker 1: make a difference and help a lot of people. I
Speaker 1: started the Clinton Foundation on the belief that everyone deserves
Speaker 1: the chance to succeed, Everyone has a responsibility to act
Speaker 1: and we all do better when we work together. In
Speaker 1: the twenty years since the Foundation first opened its doors
Speaker 1: in Harlem, we've brought people together across traditional divides to
Speaker 1: address some of the most complex and pressing challenges of
Speaker 1: our time. From our earliest efforts to expand access to
Speaker 1: life saving HIV AIDS medications from millions of people around
Speaker 1: the globe and promote healthy eating and physical activity in
Speaker 1: American schools, to our programs helping Puerto Rico and our
Speaker 1: Caribbean neighbors are built from natural disasters and prepare for
Speaker 1: the intensifying impacts of climate change, to distributing resources for
Speaker 1: parents and caregivers to promote early learning in school readiness,
Speaker 1: and providing meals and essential items for vulnerable populations in
Speaker 1: and around Little Rock. The Clinton Foundation is still putting
Speaker 1: people first and creating a culture of possibility. We couldn't
Speaker 1: do any of it without your support. I hope you'll
Speaker 1: take a moment to share your thoughts and ideas with
Speaker 1: us and learn more about our work by visiting www
Speaker 1: dot Clinton Foundation dot org. Slash podcast. Thank you. You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I always liked you did
Speaker 1: was your interests in autism. Hillary was on the Autism
Speaker 1: Caucus in the Senate. And I remember when she ran
Speaker 1: for president in two thousand and eight. We do these
Speaker 1: front porch rallies, you know, when there'll be people there.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's fifty people and maybe there's three hundred. I
Speaker 1: would always mention autism and how she was the first
Speaker 1: person ever to have a position on autism. And I
Speaker 1: promise you there was not one single solitary event I
Speaker 1: ever did, not one where someone didn't mention to me
Speaker 1: after when I was shaking hands. You know, my sister
Speaker 1: has it, might have a child with it. Here's my
Speaker 1: spectrum is very broad. Here's my fifteen year old who's
Speaker 1: got autism and he's running for class president. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that it's kind of like this coronavirus, you
Speaker 1: know it, when that virus goes chasing you, your Republican
Speaker 1: or Democratic credentials don't keep it out. And that's the
Speaker 1: way autism. And when you know, because you've got in
Speaker 1: your family, you've got to be pretty flexible and how
Speaker 1: you deal with it. I think I think we we
Speaker 1: so much of a human condition unifies us, you know, childbirth, adolescence, death, loss,
Speaker 1: all these things we all are experience them. Any health
Speaker 1: crisis you have, everybody is having it. If you have it,
Speaker 1: you have art conditioned. A lot of people have art conditions,
Speaker 1: mental conditions. People have it. And uh, I learned so
Speaker 1: much from having a brother that was severely artistic growing up,
Speaker 1: just to see kind of the impact on the family
Speaker 1: and not knowing what then. We didn't know what it
Speaker 1: was even to describe somebody in my neighborhood what autism was.
Speaker 1: They thought we were saying artistic. They say, man, that's great.
Speaker 1: You know what, what what is this? What does he?
Speaker 1: Is he a paint or whatever? You know, artism? What
Speaker 1: is that? So I think, yeah, and I also agree
Speaker 1: with you. The coronavirus can be a great rally and crying.
Speaker 1: I think the last movement of the democracy Suite. I
Speaker 1: wrote a piece called That's when all We'll see And
Speaker 1: what it's about is that you see in our country
Speaker 1: after nine eleven, the things people did to come together
Speaker 1: after the the Katrina. I thought that was a fantastic
Speaker 1: national story. Yes, there's a lot of government in the aptitude.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of things to complain about. Corruption,
Speaker 1: stealing always goes on, But when you look at what
Speaker 1: the citizens of the United States of America did for
Speaker 1: citizens of New Orleans all up and down this country.
Speaker 1: It's an unbelievable national success story, but it remains in
Speaker 1: natural memory is something that left a bad taste. You know.
Speaker 1: Of course the city made decisions it made. It were
Speaker 1: not intelligent decisions, but the feeling of the people that
Speaker 1: came out in that time being a New Orleanans going
Speaker 1: around asking people for help for New Orleans. There was
Speaker 1: an unbelievable outpouring of love and of citizenship and of
Speaker 1: help that was very tangible to hundreds of thousands of people.
Speaker 1: And that's when all wins will see says, we have
Speaker 1: so many points of connection, and we continue to override
Speaker 1: those instances to find a way to hate each other
Speaker 1: and to continue the legacy of hatred and to allow
Speaker 1: leaders to drag us down that road. And not just leaders,
Speaker 1: political leaders. Anyone who is willing to exploit a populace
Speaker 1: for some type of gain and agency is a master's
Speaker 1: in a slave narrative, and that masters slave mythology that
Speaker 1: only a handful of people can have agency and the
Speaker 1: rest of y'all, y'all better work for us and just
Speaker 1: be exploited. When an actuality. Everything great in the world
Speaker 1: is showing us that we live in an unbelievable ball
Speaker 1: of creativity, that we can create more and more and
Speaker 1: more increase as we free more and more and more
Speaker 1: creative people. And the arts is the best place to
Speaker 1: begin to adjust your understanding of a common humanity. And
Speaker 1: we as Americans, for some reason, have never been able
Speaker 1: to find or locate the arts in a in a
Speaker 1: position on our national radar, not even an unimportant position,
Speaker 1: lit a long the position of prominence it needs to
Speaker 1: occupy for us to do what we need to do
Speaker 1: to get the nourishment that it most clearly provides. Let
Speaker 1: me ask you before we finish, because a lot of
Speaker 1: people will be listening to this who maybe never been
Speaker 1: to New Orleans, and it's one of my favorite places
Speaker 1: on earth. And I was honored to work for years
Speaker 1: on in the afrimath of Katrainer to try to help
Speaker 1: the whole Golf Coast, but especially the Crescent City to recover.
Speaker 1: If you were talking to total stranger who had never
Speaker 1: been out of Alaska about what you got out of
Speaker 1: being born in and growing up and around there and
Speaker 1: then that culture, what would you say to them? Um,
Speaker 1: I would say a sing song way of approaching bad
Speaker 1: things did happen? And a full culture because it's there's
Speaker 1: a lot of soul for people in Alaska to now.
Speaker 1: I've been I played there, I played up in old
Speaker 1: old Alaska. But we have a full culture. We have
Speaker 1: our own art, we have our own music, we have
Speaker 1: our own architecture, we have our own stories, we have
Speaker 1: our own and the sing song like so, if you're
Speaker 1: not against a sing a sing song, skip a dance
Speaker 1: a way to approach the tragedies of life when you
Speaker 1: when you you understand how much, what what type of
Speaker 1: armor and shield that is. I remember you and I talked.
Speaker 1: You were president then, and you told me, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you can remember this. You said, Man, I
Speaker 1: just came back from from New Orleans and Bourbon Street Man,
Speaker 1: that was some of the worst music I ever heard
Speaker 1: in my life. What can we do to get people
Speaker 1: back to playing New Orleans music. I told my daddy
Speaker 1: that he loved that. He says he knows what's happening. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was upset because there was nobody playing. There was nobody,
Speaker 1: you know, you had to except for presidenttion Hall. There
Speaker 1: was nothing going on. It was no New Orleans music. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw you once on television and you didn't have
Speaker 1: a horn in your hand. You were given a college
Speaker 1: lecture about music, and I was I was doing something else.
Speaker 1: I just sort of saw it as I was passing
Speaker 1: by a TV and I sat down and listened to
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and I thought, it's relatively rare for
Speaker 1: a person to be gifted at anything, be a great golfer,
Speaker 1: be a great track star, be a great anything, who
Speaker 1: is also a profoundly great teacher of it. And the
Speaker 1: thing that is to me has been greatest about jazz
Speaker 1: at the Lincoln Center over all these years, and all
Speaker 1: those young people you've brought in there, all of them,
Speaker 1: you've taught, many of them had the pleasure to hear
Speaker 1: play from time to time. Where'd you get that? And
Speaker 1: how can we value that more? Well? I appreciate your
Speaker 1: olver assessment of my abilities, so thank you. But it's
Speaker 1: all my daddy stuff, you know. I mean, I just
Speaker 1: he was a great teacher, and I just was always
Speaker 1: around him, seeing him in the way he would teach.
Speaker 1: And then also as experience for me, I've been teaching
Speaker 1: since I did my first class in East St. Louis
Speaker 1: when I was eighteen for high school students, I was
Speaker 1: on the road plan with our Blakey And I think
Speaker 1: just having that good example of my father and the
Speaker 1: many great teachers I've had and work with Jazlyne Consenter.
Speaker 1: We have education Department and twelve education programs and we
Speaker 1: get great students and they also teach, so you know,
Speaker 1: I just think that, uh, it's just there are there
Speaker 1: are many fantastic teachers across the United States and the world,
Speaker 1: and they do their work every day with with Noah
Speaker 1: Hoopla and just to be in that lineage and in
Speaker 1: that line and to have respect and to have a
Speaker 1: veneration for information and for education and for knowledge. A
Speaker 1: democracy has to have that, because as as we lose
Speaker 1: our relationship with the process of learning things, we're gonna
Speaker 1: be more and more susceptible to the cheapest forms of populism.
Speaker 1: As we are in music. If you look at the
Speaker 1: American Music Awater, Yeah, you have to laugh at some
Speaker 1: of this stuff. Man, So much of it is trash.
Speaker 1: But that's where we are, and for us to reform it,
Speaker 1: we've got to start with a baseline of education and
Speaker 1: in a belief in in knowing. And I think, uh,
Speaker 1: I come from the Blues tradition, and in that tradition
Speaker 1: we but we always believe we're believers, and and and
Speaker 1: I always want people to know that your belief is
Speaker 1: an action. With trump at playing, always teach when you
Speaker 1: take a breath, everything that's in that breath is what's
Speaker 1: gonna come out of your sound. Doesn't cost you anything
Speaker 1: to take a breath. When you take that breath, fill
Speaker 1: that breath with the most meaningful things that you want
Speaker 1: to play, and then it will come out. And a
Speaker 1: thought is an action. So I want us to deal
Speaker 1: with I thought. I I believe in you, I believe
Speaker 1: in this process. I believe in people. I believe that
Speaker 1: we can get from point A to point to point
Speaker 1: see and that we will not descend into chaos and
Speaker 1: killing each other because we it would have been easy
Speaker 1: for us to do that before now, and we have
Speaker 1: not done it. So I don't need the evidence to
Speaker 1: believe in that. I am going to be the evidence
Speaker 1: of it, and that we were all doing all we
Speaker 1: can to make the life that we live better. Maybe
Speaker 1: it begins a boy takeing using people to take a
Speaker 1: deep breath, A deep breath, full of something meaningful. You
Speaker 1: know when I was when I was a boy, I
Speaker 1: was closed and I was in the school band. I
Speaker 1: used to go to this clinic and we had a
Speaker 1: high school band director in Arkansas who played first trumpet
Speaker 1: and John Phillips Susan's last band. I love that and
Speaker 1: it was a knight of Arkansas, like just having to
Speaker 1: be here. And he said, if you can learn when
Speaker 1: to breathe and how to control your breath, you will
Speaker 1: control your mind, you will control your heart, you will
Speaker 1: build a life. And he would start these teaching things
Speaker 1: about taking this trumpet and flaying what seemed forever. He
Speaker 1: could hold his breath twice as long as any of
Speaker 1: us and maintain the clarity and purity of the note.
Speaker 1: And I think that that's the legacy that you have
Speaker 1: given the many of us. We listen to you. We'd
Speaker 1: love to hear you play, we'd love to hear your talk.
Speaker 1: But you touch our hearts and our minds and give
Speaker 1: us a chance to learn in harmony and creativity. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Mr President has been honest speaking
Speaker 1: with you. Let me just close this one thing out.
Speaker 1: We're talking now, and you're giving us knowledge about something
Speaker 1: that's spiritualist breath from an everyday teacher, and that's what
Speaker 1: where the belief in the hope comes from. And you've
Speaker 1: been the President of the United States of America, and
Speaker 1: that consciousness is in you, and that's how that's how
Speaker 1: close we are in the world. So thank you for
Speaker 1: allowing me to join you always with the deepest love
Speaker 1: and respect. Thank you, You wouldn't bless you. And thanks. Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: why am I telling you? This is a production of
Speaker 1: our Heart Radio, the Clinton Foundation and at Will Media.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Craig Manascian and Will Malnady. Our
Speaker 1: production team includes Mitch Bluestein, Jamison cat Sufis, Tom Galton,
Speaker 1: Sarah Harrow Woods, and Jake Young, with production support from
Speaker 1: Tyler Scott and I'll Tavia Young. Original music by What White.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to John Sichs, Tina Finois, John Davidson on
Speaker 1: Hell Arena, Corey Gantley, Oscar Flores, Kevin Thurm, and all
Speaker 1: our dedicated staff and partners at the Clinton Foundation. If
Speaker 1: you have an idea of suggestion for the show, we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you, so please visit Clinton Foundation
Speaker 1: dot org Slash Podcast to share your thoughts with us.
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Speaker 1: You can subscribe to who Am I Telling You This
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