The Paul Wells Show - Branford Marsalis on music, America and the human brain

Episode Date: January 22, 2025

Saxophonist Branford Marsalis has won Grammys, played with artists including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Sting, and was the leader of Jay Leno's house band. In recent years, he has also been scoring movies and playing more classical music.    He dropped by Paul’s office while was in Ottawa to perform with the National Art Centre Orchestra. He talks about life on the road, his recent homecoming to New Orleans, teaching, American politics, and of course, music.

The Paul Wells Show is made possible by McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy, where I'm a senior fellow. If one is normal, doing things poorly makes one feel bad. But because I'm abnormal, doing things poorly makes me excited. This week, Branford Marsalis on Life on the Road and Moving Back Home. Yeah, I'm less crappy than I was. I'm better, subjective I guess. I'm more comfortable. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to the Paul Wells show. This week, politics is moving so fast that I decided to take a break from all of that stuff.

Fortunately, Branford Marsalis was in Ottawa to play with the National Arts Centre Orchestra. So I asked him to come over to the office to catch up. I've been talking to Marsalis off and on since the 1980s. He's a Grammy-winning jazz saxophonist. He played in Sting's band. He was Jay Leno's first music director on The Tonight Show. But that's all a million years ago now. In recent years, he's been playing more classical music with symphony orchestras.

He's been writing soundtracks for the Netflix movies, Rustin and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, among others. And a year ago, he moved back home to New Orleans for the first time in 45 years to become the artistic director of the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music, named after his father, a great piano player who passed away in 2020. So we had a lot to talk about as we always do, making music, teaching and learning, moving back home, the way historical events are experienced by little kids

and inevitably a little politics snuck into the conversation too. It's always good to catch up to Branford Marsalis. I'm glad that this time you get a chance to listen in. ["The Magic of the Night"] Okay, let's make the magic happen. All right, let's. Hey, Branford Marsalis, thanks for coming.

Hey, Paul Wells. 40 years, bro. I know. 40 years, you were a music critic in Montreal. Yeah. I remember. We were young. It was my first summer in Montreal and you were doing interviews at the Musician's Hotel and I had not signed up for an interview with Branford Marsalis, but I figured... Whoever that was. The publicity person didn't know, so I just lied. Right.

I said, yeah, I'm on that list. She said, no, you're not. I said, well, I should be. So we got the interview. There you go. The rest is history. Now you're basically on a tour with your quartet right now. You're in Ottawa on a kind of a... like between quartet gigs, am I right?

We are perpetually on tour with the quartet. Like we have a new record coming out, it's not going to be the belonging tour or the secret between the shadow and the so how many cities are you going to put on your tour so you can assume yeah we're on tour forever until we stop doing it. Do you often take apprentices out of like so you were in Flushing Queens on the weekend? Last night, yesterday. No, Sunday. Yeah, Sunday. And now you're in Ottawa to play the Leiberson Neruda songs and the music that John Williams wrote

for Catch Me If You Can. Yeah. Going from the jazz thing to the classical thing. Does that require any kind of gear shift for you? No. No. It did at first. It was traumatizing. I used to, you know, I don't want to do anything else a week before the gig because it's hard. It's hard to do. And it's hard to make that transition. The metaphor I use is in music conventions or talks, I say, see, I remember when you were 12 and you played in the band and you sucked, but everybody told you you were great. Your band director told you you were great. Your parents said it was great. So you believed it. And they're like, yeah, of course

we had said, yeah, well, when you're 42, nobody says that. They just go, yeah, man, keep trying. It's just, you know, it was really, I don't regret it. Yeah. But it was, that first 10 years was, it's a different mindset, man, it's tough. Are you getting better at it? I'm getting less shitty at it. That's the way I tend to look at it. Because I know how high the standard is.

And yeah, I'm less crappy than I was. Better? It's subjective, I guess. I'm more comfortable on stage. Most of the time I'm not kind of panicked when I'm up there, so it allows me to play music. When you're kind of panicked, then you're focused on the notes. You know, I got to get the notes right, got to get the notes right. And when you're relaxed, you can say, well, I got the notes. I gotta get the notes right, gotta get the notes right. And when you're relaxed, you can say, well, I got the notes, so now let's just focus on what it sounds like. Let's try to blend in with the orchestra and make music.

So here's the thing, I spent a little bit of time last night catching up to your recent recorded work. And I listened to the music that you wrote for the Netflix show called Bayard Rustin. Yeah. And this recording of some Mahler songs that you did with the Virginia Symphony.

Yeah, yeah. And it could hardly be more different. But there's this tune, Bayard Bush flashback from the Rustin soundtrack, which is like a ballad. Oh, the bus flashback. Yeah. Yeah. Then I listened to one of the Rook of the Year tracks and I thought, well, that's the same.

That's, well, that's Branford. Even though one's on tenor and one's on alto, one is something that you wrote and one is something you sure did. And do you hear a voice in all of these different settings that you're stuck with or that you're... Well we're all stuck with the voice we have. That's why if you you remember in your fouries in jazz, musicians and critics were always saying stupid things like he or she has not yet found their voice as though it's out there to be grabbed, it's hiding in a bush. We all have a voice. Yeah. In all aspects, whether it's sports, whether it's acting,

whether it's writing, we all have a voice. Now the question becomes to me is that are you self-aware enough to see where you're bad and will you try to fix it? And if you choose to do that, then there's a growth that comes from that. And that's how you develop your voice. A lot of times in music, as Illinois Jacquet told me once, you know, just find two or three things that's yours and stick with it. That way everybody knows it's you. I mean, yeah, okay, great. That also puts you in a box and you're stuck in that box and in that place and in that space. So even when I was a younger person,

I mean, the rhetoric hasn't changed for me since since the 1980s. Growth comes from stealing from people who are better than you. And a lot of musicians who I don't listen to anybody and I say, Yeah, it sounds like that. And I don't mean it as a compliment But I'd let them try to figure out which way does it sound I'm just yeah, I'm not a fan of like False originality. So yeah, I know it's me But I also have recordings of me when I was 16 playing a pentatonic scale on everything and it still sounds like me It's just really crappy. Yeah, so Yeah, I you know, I could hear it and say, oh, that's me. But lately, there are much better versions

of me than in prior times. See, I've been stuck in my head something that a very good writer wrote about your first album a million years ago. A.B. Spellman said nice things about the album. He said, his tone is off the rack modern. And even then I was in high school, I thought, man, that's gotta hurt. One thing we can't say about your sound now is it is not off the rack modern. And even then I was in high school, I thought, man, that's gotta hurt.

One thing you can't say about your sound now is it is not off the rack. Like it is mysterious and strange and all the things that you kind of hope that music will sound like. Well, I just stole from all the great people. When I was 24, nah, I didn't have anything. So he was right.

Yeah, it was pretty much off the rack modern because that's all I had. Nah, I didn't have anything. So he was right. It was pretty much off the rag of my mind because that's all I had. It's not like it's new in music. It's just like a historical thing. We're having political elections in the... We just had our big political election in the US. You're having elections here. collections here and the success or failure is based on the collective amnesia of the nation.

You have musicians who kind of identify with that philosophy. Oh, you know, Louis Armstrong, he was great back in his day. It's one of the ones I hear, I'm like, well, he's great now. One of my students said that to me about 15, 20 years ago. I need you to learn West End Blues. Oh man, you know, we're modernists, man. He's great back in his day. And I said, well, I like to use the seventh grade math theory, which I got from a friend

of mine from New Orleans named Barry Abear. He was in the marching band, played alto. He was two years younger than me. We were in the sax section. We just talked. He said, well, I'm going to be a physicist. I just like playing music. Great.

So when I moved to Los Angeles to work on Jay Leno's show, I got a call from Barry E. Barry. He says, man, you out here? I work for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was working on the corrective lens for the Hubble telescope. This little kid from New Orleans who marched in the band. So I took my son out and we met with Barry

and we went to the Wilson Observatory And he was showing them the planets and explaining to him how gas can have density which I still don't understand and You know the the gas giants out there And it was great. So at the end he says so Reese you ever needed help with your homework You know, give me a call. He says oh man, you can help him with that. He says Well, I'm a physicist I can hang with seventh grade math. And ever since he said that, it's the seventh grade math theory is what I call to my students. I'm like, well, since

you're a modernist and you're really great then, Louis Armstrong should be seventh grade math. I mean, it's almost a hundred years old or maybe it was a hundred at that. No, it was almost a hundred years old. You should surely you should be able to do this very easily so that is your assignment and he refused to do the assignment i read about a young piano player sean mason who was one of your students and then was one of winton students at juliard and has got a good career going and one of the things i read was that you told your students to come back having having learned some Jelly Roll Morton solos.

Yeah, it was one in specific. It was King Porter Stomp. And he did it and almost nobody had ever bothered to. No, they just said they were so overwhelmed by it. The question I have is you're at university studying music from Bramford Marcellus or from any heavy guy. And the assignment is learn this solo and that almost all the other ones had never done that. What on earth were they doing in university? I mean you hang out with musicians or you used to hang out with musicians a lot.

When did they ever talk about stealing other people's solos? All they talk about is modernity, innovation, and playing the Jelly Room Mort Martin solo is really hard. That's the whole point. I'm going to give you this assignment as a freshman and if you stay with it, maybe by the time you're a junior, you can play it. They just reject it categorically because so much of our perception of ourselves is how we feel about ourselves. And if one is normal.

Doing things poorly makes one feel bad. But because I'm abnormal, doing things poorly makes me excited. Yeah. My students, which is regular, normal people, and Sean is a very abnormal kid. And'm always looking for they have normal ones because you mean you practice this thing for two weeks for three weeks for four weeks I'll give you this is a better example. There was a student Saxophone player and I was getting him to listen to listen to Lester Young and he just couldn't cop it I said, that's really sad, bro I mean, let's the young never play anything faster than an eighth note. You can't play that you can play all these sixteenth notes

You can't play eighth notes and I'm teasing him. So we are at a Convention it's called the Jazz Educators Network the Jen conference and I'm talking to students and I said yeah You know, you got to listen to early music. And he heard me talking about it. And he was very angry at me because he was so bad at this. And he just interjects, well, you know, that's not for everybody. And I just turned around quickly and saw it was him. I said, man, how the blank would you know? I said, you've been playing music wrong for about 10 years, and you think you're going

to get it right in six weeks? And I just asked him, I said, how long does it take a baby to walk? He says, I don't have kids. I said, do you know kids? I mean, you know, okay, since you clearly can't answer the question, I'll help you. It is anywhere from eight months to a year and a half, depending on the kid. Some kids even take longer. I said, if you ever watch children, they stand up and they try to walk they take one step

They're happy then they fall then they cry because they want to walk but the brain doesn't work that way It's writing the code and you have to be patient You've asked your brain to do something you've never done It's writing the code and instead of being patient if you were a baby You would just sit on the floor and say I intend to be carried for the rest of my life because this is too difficult baby, you would just sit on the floor and say, I intend to be carried for the rest of my life because this is too difficult. And when I said it that way, he backed off and he called me two years later and said, it took a while, but man, this is really, this has changed the way I think

about music. I'm like, great. And I hang up the phone and go to work. You know, but it's, it's that kind of thing. When you tell a student learn King Porter, stop at first, it's incomprehensible that it could be that modern and that old. It's just incomprehensible. And then modern piano players have great right hands and crappy left hands because they all want to learn how to play solos like saxophone players.

Back then, they had great left hands and great right hands. So now you have to teach your left hand how to do things after having a lazy left hand for God knows how long. So there's a million reasons. I mean, this is the short version I could get into. And Sean came back in a month and was like, whew. I said, wow, okay. So then I gave him two pieces by Edvard Grieg.

Said, learn these. He came back in a month, he played the pieces. I said, yeah, you don't belong here. You need to get out of here. He says, where should I go? I said, you should go to Juilliard. You'll be in New York. He says, how do I do that? I said, you go to Juilliard.edu and if you can't figure out the rest of it, then maybe I'm wrong about you. And I called Wynton. I said, there's a guy coming your way. You need to look out for him. He says, yeah, all right, I got you. Three months later, Wynton, I said, there's a guy coming your way, you need to look out for him. He says, yeah, all right, I got you. Three months later, Wynton calls me, hey man, have you ever heard of this kid from Charlotte?

I said, that's the guy I told you about three months ago. He says, oh, he's in. I said, oh, I know he's in. It's just certain people have that thing. That echoes something that happened to you when you were about that age. Was Alvin Matisse told you, you had to get out of

Southern University very different circumstance. Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. Tell me So I'm Batiste is great clarinet player. Yes. He was died only a few years. Yeah, he was a great clarinetist and a smart man but very rigid in his thinking and He was one of those people who believed that music is a serious business, so you have to be serious at all times. And I was not serious. I mean, I was serious about music, but I wasn't serious about the diligent practice of the saxophone because I played in the rhythm and blues band as a kid and music was fun to me.

And all music is fun. Even the hard stuff, even this stuff, I mean it was terrorizing me but I'm like this is great. I have a chance to mess up in front of all of these people. So he saw me playing the Grover Washington song, Mr. Magic, for three girls in the music building. And at that time he immediately deemed that I was not serious because I should be playing Giant Steps for them.

The idea that I was trying to like win over, you know, girls with Giant Steps is absurd, but that's kind of where his space was. So he called my dad who also shared that space with him and said, your son is over here, bullshit. And he's not serious. And then that was it. My dad said, that says you can't go to Southern anymore.

So I'm going anyway, he says, you can go, but I'm not paying for it, which meant that I wasn't going. So then I went to the Berklee School of Music instead, because of course they're more serious, not really, but that's the thousand mile away view, the satellite view. Berklee School of music. They're serious there I was not told that I shouldn't go there because they were overwhelmed by my prowess They just had a very different interpretation on what it takes to be a musician All this talk about practicing and development is a little triggering for me. You may have noticed the guitar. Yeah, you go in there

I've got a lesson and I noticed the guitar. Yeah, there you go. In the corner, I've got a lesson. And I only started picking up a guitar like a month ago. Excellent. My wife and I went down to Nashville. Everyone in Nashville had a guitar and I didn't know how to do anything with those things. People who didn't seem to know a lot about music. Right.

Could pick up a guitar, right? So, okay. I cannot believe how sad I sound. I cannot believe how hard it is to play a major scale. It is. And I'm, anyway hard it is to play a major scale. It is. And I'm, anyway, this is me to hear you there, but I'm wondering, like, well, I just got to sweat it out. I got up early this morning to play my scales.

This is a really, it's really simple to explain. I played golf one time with a neurosurgeon. And I said, well, I'm going to enjoy this a lot more than you would, because I'm interested in what you do. And we talked about the brain for four and a half hours, you know, and I learned clearly, I'm not going to be a damn neurosurgeon, but the things I learned very simply were that, I mean, the brain controls every aspect of our lives.

Like eyes don't actually see, ears don't actually hear. The brain controls every aspect. And every time you come up with a new thing, the brain has to write a code for it. And the brain does not write quickly. The brain writes at roughly 0.001 millimeters every 24 hours. So it is a very slow and diligent process. It might be faster for some people, but the average, the aggregate is 0.001. So if you're thinking about how slow that is when you develop a new task and then you add age to it and all

of the memories and all of the tasks that we've asked the brain to do over the last five or six decades, the brain's pretty pissed off at you right now. And it's gonna do it, it's just gonna take some time. And more time than when I was a kid. Absolutely, there's more crap in your brain. That's the whole thing, and much easier when there's nothing in there.

But there's all this data and it has to fight, because like he said, imagine that the brain is a computer without an eraser After a while, there's no space to cause it just writes over other data Which is why when you see athletes that suddenly they say they started choking It's like you you learn a way to do it. It's probably the wrong way and then people correct you over the years,

but in certain pressure situations, the wrong way, just like the frontal lobe is the learning lobe, and the real lobe is the doing lobe. And some of this information suddenly rushes to the front lobe again, and it just scrambles the whole thing. And that's essentially what choking is. And you just have to work to write over it enough.

It's just like an everyday kind of occurrence. I have little things that I do that only classical music would would expose. I mean, certain notes, I lift my fingers off of the instrument when I shouldn't. But when you're when the notes are flying by, it's imperceptible. But suddenly I'm playing these lines and I realize that it's not making sound and I have to play it over and over again. And then I realize certain fingers are lifting

and I work to correct that. But in certain precious situations, everything, it goes back to what it knows. I wanna take a moment to thank the people who support this show. Tackling the complexity of global challenges demands a different approach to public policy. The Max Bell School of Public Policy's Teaching, Research, Policy Engagement and Public Outreach develops the skills and understanding to solve the most important issues facing Canada and

the world today. They offer several public lectures and conferences throughout the year on current policy conversations and provide an 11-month intensive master's program to prepare the next generation of policy leaders. Learn more at mcgill.ca maxbellschool. When you come off the road, you are going home to New Orleans. Yeah. Where you didn't live for a long time. Right.

Where you grew up. Right. You're finishing a year as the artistic director of the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music in New Orleans. What made you take that gig and go back home? Well, I was actually determined to go home. And got to that point in my life, circumstances, emotional circumstances.

And I looked around and said, man, I always wanted to go back anyway. So once I went back, the executive director said, hey, why don't you do this since you're coming back? Of course, when PR gets ahold of it, then it becomes going home to the continuous father's legacy. It's a great fundraiser. It's great to say that, but I was moving back regardless. It was just time to get back where I wanted to be anyway. So, I mean, it was a tough move for a million reasons. It was that first like last year. I don't remember much of last year. It was just such, yeah, that

was a tough move. It was a lot of emotion behind that move. And but this year, everything's starting to regulate itself Has New Orleans changed I mean it went through a lot It will the big I think Katrina was the big flashpoint was Katrina was the moment when There was suddenly an influx of people from other places That just showed up so that was the first shock for me. So I was what? 45, 2005, yeah 45.

And then I went back to New Orleans and I'm used to hearing New Orleans talk, you know, what you at bro, what's happening? Hey partner, you know, what can I do you for? And I walked into a store and the guy said, what's up man? Like clearly in New York or over there thing. And it stunned me like, oh my Like, clearly in New York or over there thing. And it stunned me.

Like, oh my God, they're here. And then the more I realized, yeah, they're there. So they have changed the city in some good ways. I mean, the tolerance for corruption is not near the threshold. It's much lower than it used to be, which added to the dysfunction of the city. But it's still pretty much, you know, divided along racial lines and racial perceptions. I mean, the old South doesn't really die. They might hybrid it for a little while. But that doesn't bother me because what I always do is I can always find

people who don't represent that. Like not everybody in New Orleans represented that even back in the old days. So I mean, my life is full of people who I think are just, you know, cool and forward thinking. And the backwards people, well, they're not going anywhere. They'll be there. But I, there's an energy there that I've never felt. And it's the most unique city in the United States. Ironically, it would be a tie between Montreal and New Orleans and they're both former French colonies. So I think that those are very, very unique places. It's one of the few places where a musician, a horn player can work a lot. Although sometimes I mean,

the standards aren't sky high, but depends on which standards you're talking about. The standards that care to people is sky high. It makes people feel good. The musicians have this kind of outward. Charismatic approach. This really not a market for like, you know, introverted geniuses who can't communicate with people and play all this esoteric crap that nobody can understand. I mean, well, in New York, there's a market for it. You know, it's a

couple of clubs where musicians go and it's only musicians in the audience and only musicians on stage. But if your goal is to play for people for decades and decades, it's hard to do that when people have to know what you're doing to like what you're doing. So in New Orleans, you don't have to know anything. Half of the time, the musicians don't know all of that stuff, but they know how to create a sound

that brings joy to people, and that's why they're there. They're not there for a music education. So there was this interesting night at Jazz at Lincoln Center. They had this battle of the big bands. They had the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra and they had Captain Black Big Band, Orrin Evans from Philadelphia. Yeah, I know.

Playing sort of post-cold train, very modern stuff. And New Orleans Jazz Orchestra, at the end of the night, they did a second line march around the hall. I like the Captain Black Big Band because they were musicians I've heard of playing the stuff that I've been listening to all my life. Everybody who was with me preferred New Orleans Jazz Orchestra. Of course. Yeah.

You're a strange one too, just like me. Strange people have to understand that they're strange. That's the problem I have with this kind of like, you know, it's not really folk because they believe it, this intellectual outrage that we tend to have talking about, man, back in the day, man, we would be perceived differently. I'm like, it was always been the same. It's just not that many people were interested in that. If if it's it's kind of the delivery mechanism.

If the delivery mechanism is we're geniuses and we're scholarships and you need to step up to us, people will reject that. But with my group, I mean, it's just like, we just, it's like four jackasses on a stage and we play complicated music, but it doesn't feel complicated because we like it. We just like people, we like each other, and we're not trying to prove a point. Yeah. You know, if it's...

You had an album called Four MFs Playing Tunes. Yeah, that wasn't my idea, but yes. Yes. You needed convincing? No, I just, I was overwritten. It was just my manager thought it was, you know, she's 10 years older than me. Her idea of what's hip and cool

is very different than mine. I don't engage in that stuff. The titles and like somebody was asking me stuff about the new record. I'm like, I don't know any of that stuff. My job is to make records. I don't, I'm not in the record business. I'm in, I'm on the music side of that and I'm lucky that I don't have to do that stuff. You were talking a minute ago about the racial divide,

including in a very multiracial city like New Orleans. Your brother Wynton has talked about something I've always wondered about, which is that after Martin Luther King got shot, you guys got moved to a new school from there's the black school to an integrated school. That's not my recollection. Yeah, you often have separate recollections.

So you don't... We moved to that school. I was in fourth grade. So let's see. First grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade. So that's what. Sixty-nine, we moved to that school. I don't think that it had anything to do with Dr. King being assassinated.

It's just uh, Brown versus the Board of Education was decided in 1957. And the southern states fought it as long as they could and however they could. But when Kennedy was assassinated, it was that assassination, I presume always, that allowed Johnson to push through the voter rights legislation and the civil rights legislation. And it was those two things at which point the federal government would have to disseminate out into all of these southern states and force them to do things that they were not interested in doing. It wasn't like they all said, oh, it's so bad.

I mean, Southerns had some really charged words for Dr. King even after he got killed. So certain Southerns, not all Southerners. So it wasn't like they said, oh, well, now that he's dead, we've had a change of heart. Those things just coincided. My mother was the driving force behind us going to predominantly white schools. So it's the end of the 60s, you're nine, eight or nine years old. Yeah. Was that a different experience for you?

Was it different? Yeah, it was different, but it wasn't like traumatizing. I mean, you know, you're going along in school and then somebody, you know, throws an epitaph at you and you punch him in the face and you slug it out. I remember me and this guy, Sal Lentini, he said something we start throwing and then the principal sends us to the bathroom and we're just cleaning up and he turns and he says, you missed the spot over here, the same guy. And he goes, I got you good as I got you too. But it was like the boys would do that.

Without the racial dynamic. And then when it was over, it was over and I didn't feel the continual racial animus from most of the students. The parents were another story. Really? Oh yeah, totally. I have your thing from the parents then from, of course, because they grew up in segregation.

I mean, the parents were kids in de facto segregation. I mean, as what is 1960. So the kids were, the parents were raised in the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s. They believed in the mythology of racial superiority. And fourth grade kids, you know, I mean, you know, it's like when these questions come up, you say, were you traumatized?

I'm like, I was nine. How could I? No, I wasn't traumatized. I mean, maybe if, you know, our house was burned down or some crazy act of violence, lynching, yeah, maybe I might have been then. But that stuff is just anything that happens in your life. Like, if you grow up and your father slaps all of you guys at 8 a.m. on a Thursday, you accept that as normality.

So when you meet other kids and say, wait a minute, you don't get slapped at 8 a.m. on a Thursday? That's when you go, oh man. But when you're just growing up, I mean, whatever you're going through is like the normal thing. It's like, you know, the civil, like the acts of violence towards blacks increased exponentially after a lot of black soldiers returned from the war in World War I. Yeah. Now, before that, it was just what you're, but then they were living in France and fighting in France and fighting Germans and fighting all these people.

And they came back like, yeah, you're not talking to me that way and they wound up getting killed. That led among many other things to what happened in Tulsa which I've only just learned about in the last few years. No, Tulsa was a different thing it really wasn't World War one. It's very similar to a lot of what's going on now. I mean, part of the mythology of blacks, when we get into these, my kids get into these conversations about what's happening now.

Can you believe these people? Blah, blah, blah. I said, if you can come from a culture that can establish a intellectual and moral justification for owning human beings, then anything else is possible. We can explain anything away. Anything can be explained away and When you grow up believing the rhetoric of the time, you know Black people ain't smart enough to read, you know, they're their brains don't have the capacity to function as normal Americans

This is one of the reasons they function well as slaves. They're like children, they need to be told what to do. Now when you look at the laws back then, they say it's illegal to teach a Negro how to read. But wait a minute, I thought Negroes couldn't read. I mean, why would you have a law saying it's illegal for Negroes to read if Negroes can't read? There's no law saying that horses can't read. You're not saying it's illegal

to try to teach a horse how to read. So you're always living with this weird kind of dualities where you are told one thing, but the actions say another thing. So I think that when these guys came back from the war wearing uniforms and not responding in the traditional way when somebody calls you a boy, or if you're on the sidewalk and say, get off the sidewalk when I'm walking. The reaction was very different and it required from them a more forceful response to maintain this psychological thing that they need to feel that their lives are valid. And by the time I went to school, yeah, the parents were hardcore because they didn't

think we belonged there. And our grades were pretty good. That made it worse. That made it worse. That made it worse. Cause you're doing something you shouldn't, theoretically you can't do and you're doing it well. We weren't able to do. So when we were first there,

it was just like an act of charity. But then they started realizing, wait a second, Wynton has this great story about one of our nuns, Sister Michael Anne, who really did not like black people. And Wynton made the best grades in the class, but the academic award went to someone else. So he goes home and he's like, Sister Michael Ann gave that award to somebody else and this is wrong. And I should be the one to get that certificate.

And my mother said, oh, so is that what the problem is, the certificate? Well, I can go draw you up a certificate right now. What would you like on the certificate? That's not the point. She said, that's what you said. You said that you're mad because you didn't get a certificate. So I can say, I went to Marcel, this is the smartest kid in the class and he should have gotten a certificate. Would you like that? And he thought about it. He says, I'm going to go talk to Sister Michael Ann. No, he said, you need to go talk to Sister Michael Ann. She goes, no, you need to do that. So he went to Sister Michael Ann and said, I was the person who should have gotten that academic

award. She goes, well, what makes you think that? He says, you left all the papers on the desk and I saw the score and I had the highest score and her response was beautiful. She says, then you shouldn't have looked at those papers. It's just like, that is a status quo answer. There will be no reconsideration. And I mean, that's kind of the history of America in a lot of ways. I mean, you have intelligent people, you have rogues. And intelligent people always like to believe they can live in a world where they don't need rogues.

Russia proves you need rogues. You see what they're doing? I mean, is that like an intellectual discussion? No, he hires rogues and they go in and they don't even they the mayhem that they're causing The things that they're trying to do the thing that happened in the colony. You know, that's that's some rogue stuff that's not some let's let's discuss this discuss this over tea and Our nation we have Rogues and the Rogues did things, you know, we needed the Indiansues and the rogues did things. We needed the Indians gone, the rogues, we're your guys.

Needed to enforce slave laws. We need to subjugate the Chinese. We need to treat the Irish like crap. And then the Italians that came after them. And there were always people willing to do this role, to fill this Salem witch trials in the 17th century. Our crops aren't growing. It's because those women are witches.

I mean, you kidding me? This you're going to fall for that. And then writing your book 20 years later, yeah, we shouldn't have done that. And that's just like the human existence, you know, the war in Rwanda where they just started turning on their neighbors and then when it was over, they're like, yeah, we shouldn't have done that. Hey, who's winning the football match? This is a thing that we do as humans.

We just keep it moving forward. It was a movie, I think it was called Mystic River about the community was convinced. Boston? Yeah. Yeah. Community was convinced that this guy was a pedophile and a pervert and they wind up killing him and then they found out it wasn't him. And then Lennie's character was like, yeah, you know, he was such a strange man, you know, that, you know, he shouldn't even been in this neighborhood.

It was just like, you just keep it moving. And you know, I can't speak to other countries, but in the United States, yeah, that's the whole thing. We just keep it moving. And all of those things, we don't discuss those things, we don't talk about those things. But the success that all minorities have had, I'm including women in the group, the success that women have had and minorities in the last 40 years has caused a great amount of gnashing of teeth by people in other neighborhoods who believe that that stuff should be theirs.

Or if not theirs, those other people should not have those things. And that's a very old sentiment. And it's not being revisited with the violence that used to accompany it because the society has evolved as such, is that the United States government won't turn a blind eye to that. Even though President Trump has pardoned all of those people who tried to destroy the Capitol, the society writ large that put them in jail

won't turn a blind eye to that. And there are a lot of people saying, what they will now, okay, that remains to be seen. I mean, is Donald Trump powerful enough to replace all of the civil servants who have served in the United States for decades and replace them with people who are going to aggregate 240 years of democratic norms? And they were trying to compare it to Russia or compare it to Germany. Germany had experimented with democracy for roughly 20 years before Hitler came to power. Maybe it was less, maybe it was even 16 years,

more like 16 years. This is a 250 year process. And they are kind of institutions that are kind of baked into the cake now. And maybe I'm being Pollyannish, although I'm not really a Pollyannish kind of person. But when I look at all of the context and the data and the history of the country and all of this stuff, it just tells me that it'll be pretty hard for him

to do some of the things that he dreams to do. And I don't necessarily believe that he means it because anybody that has lived in New York has known about Trump's con man proclivities, as it were. Every building he builds is the most beautiful building ever built. The biggest most beautiful, the most beautiful hotel, this is it. And even on this TV show, you're going to be staying at the most beautiful hotel, Trump Hotel, it's just so he always bloviates. And some of his hardcore followers will, you never know, I mean, like these tariffs that he's gonna institute,

certainly the prices will go up, not down. And when you ask people, I always, it's a waste of time asking people why they vote for people, in my view. I had a friend who was saying, why do they vote for him? I said, man, because they do. He says, I need to understand this. I said, what's a vegetable that you don't like? He says, I'm cool with vegetables, but I hate tomatoes. And so I started, man, because they do. He says, I need to understand this. I said, what's a vegetable that you don't like?

He says, I'm cool with vegetables, but I hate tomatoes. And so I started telling him, well, tomatoes are great. Why do you hate tomatoes? I just don't like them, man. I just don't like them. I said, what do you mean you don't like them? I mean, I'm going to sit here and convince you that you should like tomatoes.

He goes, good luck with that. And then I just stopped and looked at him, and he went, okay. I said, that is what you were doing. You're trying to convince people who hate tomatoes to say that they should like tomatoes. It is a waste of time. So when people say they vote for him, I go, yeah, cool. Because I'm not gonna change their mind.

I'm not gonna change their mind. And they're not me. They don't see the world out the way I see the world. And the one thing about the United States right now is just because we don't see the world the same way, we can't go out there and enforce our worldview through intimidation and violence, even though Trump will certainly try to do that because that's his nature. And some of his supporters will try to replicate that. So we'll see what happens down the road, but. Yeah, so I mean, I get in trouble with some of my friends

because I think one of the mistakes of people who oppose Trump is to try and force everyone to agree with them or try and force everybody to like tomatoes. I agree, I totally agree. That's the thing. But the funny thing is both sides do the same thing. Oh, we got to live under him.

I said, that's the way they felt when Obama won. That's the way they felt when Biden won. They felt like they were suffering. You feel you're suffering? No, I don't. It's just the person I wanted to win didn't win. Now it's time to go to work. Hey, you're running a school. I'm not running the school. You are the figurehead of a school? I'm not even the figurehead of that school. What is your relationship with the school that calls you? It's not really a school. It's a community. It's a community center. In the United States, we have these centers,

Boys Club and AAU, and a lot of these kids who they consider at risk because they have single parents who work a lot, or both parents work a lot, and kids are home a lot between the hours of like 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. To keep them from sitting on the porch and allowing trouble to come to them, you put them in a football camp or a basketball camp or a baseball camp. And there's nothing like that for people who don't have academic, I mean, physical gifts. There's like extra work at math class or something like that, but there's a whole bunch of people in the middle and the idea was let's give them an instrument, let's give them some music lessons, not to turn them into musicians. It's not a music school. Because while they're there, from three to four, it's homework. So they do their homework in a controlled environment

where all of the snacks are healthy. I mean, painfully healthy. I hate being over there. All of the snacks are healthy and the kids are in an environment where it's safe and people are nurturing and looking after them. Then they take music classes and then we release them to their parents. So we're not starting, it's not a music school. Musicians are always going to find their way. Musicians found their way even before music schools were invented. They'll always find their way. So what we're trying to do is use all of the positive characteristics of music, which if I had to try to define it, which I think is so much, well all of music is invisible for the most part other than the instruments themselves.

So, learning how to play odd meter, learning how to play in tune, learning how to play odd meter, learning how to play in tune, learning how to play in time, learning how to play with others, these all spatial realities. And in science and math, as you become more extreme in the upper echelons of it, it's all spatial understanding. So if you can't really teach quantum physics to a seven-year-old, but you can teach them a scale, and if you can't really teach quantum physics to a seven-year-old, but you can teach them a scale and if you can teach them how to hear and play in tune, then you've already activated the construct for spatial learning that should they want to become like Barry A. Bear, they're already well into it in a way that other kids would not be because they didn't play instruments.

We've got a program here in town that's kind of similar. Free lessons, free instrument loans to kids who couldn't afford it. It's called Orchestra and I've been involved with them for like seven or eight years. I used to butt heads with the artistic director who absolutely does run that program. I used to say, well, we're not trying to make excellent musicians, we're trying to make excellent citizens. Right. Yeah. That's it. I agree. I totally agree. Yeah. You got to find things for these kids to do rather than sit around and what we used to say in the old days, watch TV, but no, they sit around and they look at their phones all day. Yeah. They're

either playing video games or they're scrolling on the internet or doing TikTok videos. We have to try to engage them in a different way, you know, and some people you you're not gonna reach but you got to try to reach the people you can reach. When you go out on the stage on Wednesday night are you gonna be nervous? Does that still happen? I don't know. I suspect not, but the last time I played with an orchestra, it was in Poznań, Poland. And I said, oh, this is fine. And I walked on stage and it never stopped.

It just shook the whole time. I'm like, what the hell is that? Just, you don't know. It's part of the beauty of it. You don't know. I suspect I'll be fine. And if I am nervous, it'll be in the very, very, very beginning of it. I don't know. Okay. Well, I'll be there if that calms you down or makes you nervous. That'll make me feel better.

Okay. We've been at this for a long time, my man. It's really good catching up. Always, brother. Thanks for listening to the Paul Wells Show. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica and supported by McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy. My producer is Kevin Sexton. Our executive producer is Stuart Cox. Laura Regehr is Antica's head of audio. If you subscribe to my Substack, you can get bonus content for this show,

as well as access to my newsletter. You can do that at paulwells.substack.com. If you're enjoying this show, give us a good rating on your podcast app. It helps spread the word. We'll be back next Wednesday.