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Special Features
- Documentary "Making of Jazz" (16 minutes)
- Playlist information for over 500 songs
- Three full-length performances not seen in the film: Louis Armstrong's "I Cover the Waterfront" (1933), Duke Ellington's "C Jam Blues" (1942), and Miles Davis's "New Rhumba" (1959)
- Music and photo credits
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| Ken Burns: Jazz Season 1 |
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
The film is also potent in arguing that the history of race in the 20th-century U.S. is at jazz's heart. But a few problems arise. First is Burns's reliance on Wynton Marsalis as his chief musical commentator. Marsalis might be charming and musically expert, but he's no historian. For the film to devote three of its episodes to the 1930s, one expects a bit more historical substance. Also, Jazz condenses the period of 1961 to the present into one episode, glossing over some of the music's giant steps. Burns has said repeatedly that he didn't know much about jazz when he began this project. So perhaps Jazz, for all its glory, would better be called Jazz: What I've Learned Since I Started Listening (And I Haven't Gotten Much Past 1961). For those who are already passionate about jazz, the film will stoke debate (and some derision, together with some reluctant praise). But for everyone else, it will amaze and entertain and kindle a flame for some of the greatest music ever dreamed. --Andrew Bartlett
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Customer Reviews
Briefly, what are the good vs. bad qualities of this series?
GOOD: Music is often blended extremely well with visual material. There is much great music and great film footage. Anyone new to jazz will be exposed to these. Even those not so new to jazz will find interesting sounds and sights. The commentary by Gary Giddons throughout the series is unusually helpful, insightful and moderate, in contrast to some other commentators (see BAD below). The film is good at telling stories (although many of these blur into legend and myth, see below). This film will be entertaining to the general public; it will expose jazz to many people who would never have gotten into it otherwise. It will widen jazz's audience, and in this sense, it will be good for jazz. I don't know how many people I've seen posting on the internet recently who've said that because of this series, they've decided to buy more jazz CDs, go to some jazz concerts, and buy books on the history of jazz and various musicians. So many people are at least being pointed in the direction of exploring jazz on their own, this in itself is a good thing, which will eventually be more significant than the serious flaws in the series (despite that critics of the series feel otherwise at the moment).
BAD: Very often historically inaccurate, blurring the line between history, legend, myth, and cliche. These sins are too numerous to list. See Francis Davis's recent excellent review in the Atlantic online. ("I Hear America Scatting", January 2001) The narration is full of simple, declarative _subjective_ statements which are presented as if they were concrete facts. The history of jazz is presented as closed, undisputed, and final, rather than open, alive, and fresh. The film is awash in hyperbole, overstatement, and blind sentimentality, which takes the place of solid analysis and explanation. Figures (esp. Armstrong and Ellington) are deified to such a degree that the deification they receive completely overshadows their musicianship, and hence trivializes any legitimate attempts to explain or describe their true impact. The music of both Armstrong and Ellington is enough to defend their contributions as some of the most important in jazz history; we don't need to be told that Armstrong "was sent from heaven to make people happy". The film has a definite bias in promoting the Marsalis-Crouch viewpoint. This is perhaps the most serious flaw -- Burns is trying to find abstract ideas (America, freedom, race, democracy, etc.) in jazz music, and ends up injecting race to an extent that is not accurate with social history. There's nothing wrong with having a viewpoint. The problem comes in presenting this viewpoint in such a way that the viewer is never aware that there IS a viewpoint IN THE FIRST PLACE. Evidence of this comes from the stream of newbies to jazz who, after watching the series, confidently reply to the critics: "But this series is well made after all, because NOW I have a good introduction to the history of jazz." Really. How could you KNOW, if this is your ONLY significant exposure to jazz? And that's the big problem, is that the series always gives the impression that it's "objective", giving viewers a false sense of security. The scat singing is annoying. And of course, the impression that jazz died and suddenly reawakened when Wynton Marsalis picked up a horn is patronizing.
So, the series is good as mainstream entertainment and as a vehicle for getting the general public very excited about a neglected art form. The series is bad as an accurate, even somewhat objective history of jazz, and it's conceived with a social agenda that severely compromises its presentation.
My own (admittedly biased) advice to jazz newbies interested in this series: I would rent the series from the videostore. Watch it, enjoy it, love it, and take it with a ton of salt. Then, take the money you would have spent on buying the series, and get several good CDs that interest you. Also, buy the three following excellent books, which together will give you a much richer, much more insightful, much more accurate, and much more representative history of this art form:
The History of Jazz, by Ted Giola
Visions of Jazz: The First Century, by Gary Giddons
Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954-1999, by Whitney Balliett
In terms of background in the jazz genre, I fall somewhere between the wide-eyed jazz neophyte critics say this series was aimed at and the graying veteran who spends two or three nights a week listening to live fusion jazz or who rages at creator Ken Burns' exclusion of an obscure might-be bepop avatar.
And from that vantage point, I think Jazz is pretty darn good.
Of course I was puzzled by some of the choices Mr. Burns made in producing this film, the exclusion of some artists and derivative movements and the time spent on others. I raised my eyebrows at the heavy reliance on Wynton Marsalis' views and commentary, the long discussions about race, the glossing over of the modern era.
My point is not to defend these aspects but only to say that it is easy to find fault in something of this scope. Producing this series was a mammoth undertaking: it is 19 hours of artfully done film, culled from thousands of hours of interviews, footage, and music. I cannot imagine anything of this scale being produced without also producing a legion of critics, and Jazz certainly proves that point. But I also fail to come up with any other single source where the viewer can see, hear, and learn so much about the greatest American art form.
There is more to recommend it: this DVD collection includes a host of interactive features that make further learning and listening easy. In a specific DVD mode, viewers who click on the name of a song when it appears on the screen find that the film stops and a list of all the musicians who contributed to the piece appears, along with the recording studio, the year of production and other miscellaneous tidbits. I discovered that each song on each DVD is individually tracked, making it easy to jump from one to the other. Furthermore, the "extras" section includes three stunning full-length performances not included in the film (my favorite is Duke Ellington's "C Jam Blues") and a well-done 15-minute documentary on how the film was produced.
Why buy the DVD? There is a minor amount of extra footage. More significantly, the program can be altered so that whenever a piece of music appears, one can display the discographical info. As such, one never has to wonder what they are listening to. Furthermore, the sharpness of the DVD video picture and clearness of the audio is a selling point, particularly when you're looking at vintage photos, videos, and audio that are often not in optimal condition. Plus, with the DVD you can watch the series at your own pace.
I might have thought beforehand that a series which takes six hours just to get to Armstrong/Hines' 1928 landmark recording WEST END BLUES might be a little too obsessive. Yet I remained riveted to the television screen as jazz's history unfolded, from Buddy Bolden to Cassandra Wilson. Jazz has a VERY compelling history on many levels--emotionally for one given the periodic mist in my eyes. I would have preferred a bit less commentary over the clips of jazz's great artists, but occasionally Burns does let the music speak for itself. I was impressed that we get to know a lot of the primary artists in a fair amount of detail. The likes of Armstrong and Ellington (but surprisingly not Miles Davis) are followed from the beginning to the end of their lives.
My first significant exposure to jazz was in the 1970s, and I believe that if this series has an achilles heel, it is that jazz's impact on contemporary popular music could have been examined, which would have provided younger generations a logical entry point that we can relate to, irregardless of our prior degree of exposure to jazz. Instead, the impression-by-omission left here is that jazz has virtually no ties to contemporary pop culture, which I strongly dispute. I think the majority of the viewers of this program are ultimately going to be those who reached adulthood in the 1970s or later, and there is so much that could have been exposed to these generations to indicate that jazz is not a museum piece, but has significant links to contemporary popular culture. For example, I hear a considerable jazz influence on artists as diverse as Stevie Wonder, Sade, various "acid jazz" artists (particularly in Japan--one of many indications of jazz's global influence), early Earth Wind & Fire, Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan, and countless others.
Many will compile their list of JAZZ's omissions (Toshiko Akiyoshi would lead mine). Yet even with these relatively minor quibbles, Ken Burns has done the music a great service with this project. I wouldn't be surprised if this series ignites a substantial increase in interest in the music by consumers who otherwise might have never given jazz music much thought.
Ken Burns at his best.
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