Marsalis -- who sat down with AFP in Beijing as he kicked off a series of performances in China -- has charted a decades-long career that has seen him win nine Grammys and tour the world with his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (JLCO).
The 62-year-old is a passionate educator, often emphasising the power of jazz as a way to heal social and political woes.
"The art of jazz is the art of achieving balance," Marsalis told AFP.
"There's nothing that the world needs more at this time than to be able to communicate differences of opinion," he added.
Born in 1961 into a family of celebrated musicians, the New Orleans native grew up immersed in the American South's rich cultural heritage.
Marsalis originally intended to pursue classical music as his primary profession, enrolling in New York's prestigious Juilliard School in 1979.
But he soon reconsidered, landing early partnerships with towering figures in jazz including Art Blakey and Herbie Hancock before embarking on his own career.
- Pathways 'to communicate' -
"I draw inspiration from everywhere," said Marsalis.
"It could be from a pretty lady, it could be a poem that I read, it could be the way a person speaks," he added.
"I can write frivolous things that are just happy and then I can write very serious things that are about serious subjects like life and death and prejudice and ignorance.
"I don't feel relegated to one or the other."
Throughout his decades in the limelight, Marsalis has not shied away from using his musician's perspective to shine a light on touchy political issues.
He compared recent tensions between the United States and China to his own childhood experiences.
While growing up, "my brother could not sleep without music on, and I could not sleep with music on. We have to figure out how to achieve balance.
"I don't go to other people's countries to proselytise or tell them what they should be doing.
"I'm a guest, and I come there trying to figure out what it is that we have in common that I can accentuate to ease the pathways for us to communicate."
- 'Crisis of identity' -
Marsalis called the upcoming US presidential election -- a bitterly contested matchup pitting former president Donald Trump against current Vice President Kamala Harris -- "a crisis of identity".
Marsalis has been a vocal critic of racism in the United States, once referring to Trump's call to build a wall on the southern border to keep Mexican immigrants out as "cheap populism".
But he has also encouraged broad-mindedness, angering many in 2017 when he offered to perform at Trump's inauguration following his shock victory.
This year's presidential contest represents "a referendum on the soul of the country," Marsalis told AFP.
The veteran jazzman has a reputation for respecting history and tradition, having once eschewed the introduction of electric sounds in the genre popularised in the 1970s by innovators like Miles Davis.
Marsalis's reverence for the heritage of his craft is deeply personal.
His father -- Ellis Marsalis Jr., also a New Orleans native -- was a prominent jazz pianist and educator. He passed away in 2020 from Covid at the age of 85.
Marsalis says he doesn't have a strong ambition to shape the way history will remember him.
"I'm part of a legacy," he explained.
"My father, he passed away, but I try to live up to what he did and continue things.
"There are going to be other people who will do things, and they'll do significant things.
"The world is a very complicated place."
China's Jia brings film spanning love, change over decades to Busan
Busan, South Korea (AFP) Oct 9, 2024 -
Chinese director Jia Zhangke's ambitious latest, which utilises footage shot across two decades, offered a peek into the evolving nature of cinema as it unspooled at this year's Busan International Film Festival.
"Caught by the Tides" combines a story of elusive love with a panoramic portrayal of recent Chinese history using everything from low-resolution digital camera footage to a scene enhanced with cutting-edge AI technology.
And while it explores the meaning of the past, the film's creation emphasised innovation.
Jia assembled and recontextualised footage shot over more than 20 years, including unused scenes from previous films, newly filmed sequences, and random images he captured during his travels -- blending documentary and fiction.
The result, with a format reminiscent of Richard Linklater's 2014 film "Boyhood", creates a vivid record of time passing, particularly through lead actress Zhao Tao, Jia's long-time collaborator and wife in real life.
As she goes on a fruitless search for a lost love, audiences witness her age before their eyes.
The film also uses images related to key events that have shaped contemporary China, such as the successful bid for the 2008 Olympics and the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, which resulted in often overlooked suffering for those displaced by the project.
"After Covid, I felt that one era had ended and a new one was emerging," Jia told reporters in Busan when asked what motivated him to create "Caught by the Tides".
"With the rapid advancements in technology, including science, the Internet, and AI, people's lifestyles have also shifted. I realised that during this period of change, it was important to process the (accumulated) footage I had previously filmed."
Actress Zhao described the film as a "truly precious gift."
"It has allowed me to document my 20s, 30s, and 40s through the medium of film, while also expressing the lives and struggles of many women through the character," she told reporters.
The film played over the weekend as part of BIFF's gala presentation section.
- Covid, cinema and AI -
Jia's feature debut, "Xiao Wu", earned the director BIFF's New Current Award for emerging filmmakers in 1998, when he was just 28.
"It's not an exaggeration to say that my life as a filmmaker started in Busan," Jia said, adding he had missed the South Korean port city since his last visit.
He has since won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival for "Still Life" (2006), among other prestigious awards, establishing himself as one of the most important Chinese filmmakers of his generation.
"Jia stood out as someone who is obviously talented. He was, above all else, original," Kim Dong-ho, the 87-year-old BIFF founder, told AFP of the Chinese filmmaker's younger years.
Now 54, Jia has brought his latest film to Busan at a pivotal moment of change for the festival.
BIFF's opening night featured a streaming title for the first time in its history, and it hosted a day-long conference just on the theme of AI in content production.
At the festival's main venue, giant posters of Netflix's latest streaming projects underlined the shift -- including its opening film "Uprising," positioned next to a festival gift store that ironically proclaimed: "Theatre is Not Dead."
Jia's film, by its end, reflects and evokes these changes and what may lie ahead, showing its characters queuing for PCR tests and wearing masks during the Covid pandemic, an era that contributed to the rise of streaming platforms worldwide.
One scene was modified using AI technology, changing the film that the protagonist watches to create a stronger link to an element introduced later in the story -- robots.
When reflecting on his some 26 years in film, Jia said: "It feels like I've been drifting in an endless ocean."
But "completing each film made me feel like I stood tall, having overcome the waves."
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