Branford Marsalis – HuffPost 10.18.10

Mike Ragogna: What is your advice for someone who is coming on the music scene right now trying to figure out where they fit?

Branford Marsalis: I’ve never really spent any time thinking about where I fit. The whole thing is simple for me–I like being around musicians who like to play music because people play music for different reasons. Take, for instance, there are a couple of saxophone players in jazz who are really, really, unbelievable technical players, but you get the sense from them that they don’t even like jazz. Some people were talking about this one guy, and they said, “Man, he doesn’t even like jazz, why is he doing this?” And I said, “Well, if you’re a saxophone player, what other option do you have?” In the ’70s, you could have played in rock bands because they had horn sections, but now they use keyboards and samplers. So, you can play smooth jazz; a lot of guys want to at least play something that has some level of technical challenge. If you want to have some kind of technical challenge in the career, jazz is the only place they fit, even though technically, when you listen to them, they’re not really playing jazz at all, they’re playing the hell out of the saxophone.

The reason I think that I’m able to succeed in all different forms of music is that I always like the stuff that I’m playing. My first consideration when Sting asked me to play in his band was the musical consideration, not the financial consideration, and because I really do appreciate his songwriting and I really do love the way he approaches music, it’s easy for me to play with him.