“Arts, Rhetoric, and Swing: The Writings of Wynton Marsalis” is a group of study guides designed for high school teachers for use in a Language Arts curriculum, in conjunction with the writings of Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winner, Wynton Marsalis. The first guide in this group is designed to be used for Marsalis’s book, Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life.

While best known for his music, Mr. Marsalis has also touched audiences worldwide with his passion for the arts. This passion has compelled him to write. Writing is one of the major tools in his quest to tell the stories of artistic expression and to connect people, young and old, to the spirit of the arts; the spirit that he believes is the absolute essence of humanity. The essential questions integrated in to this curriculum touch that spirituality.

These guides help teachers and students explore that essence within the academic standards of secondary curriculum. One of Mr. Marsalis’s goalsĀ is to shift the paradigms of educational systems so that students can more readily engage in creative, artistic, communal, and scholarly pursuits.

Marsalis has written in various genres: speeches, poetry, stories, lectures, biographies, and histories. The guides empower teachers and students to explore these writings in a way that links the traditions of yesterday with the frontiers of tomorrow, respecting the wisdom of the ages while encouraging the creation of a new wisdom for a new age.