Jazz : A Film By Ken Burns
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Movie Reviews of Jazz : A Film By Ken Burns
Movie Review: ken burns jazz
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a spectacular history of Jazz! One of the best documentaries out there. Ken burns does an amazing job.Movie Review: Excellent series, though a little romanticized
Summary: 4 Stars
What i really enjoyed about this series was how in-depth it went on the origins of jazz. As a musician (not professional) myself, and a lover of jazz myself, there was a lot i didn't know about the pre-1920 story of jazz. The 19th Century Creole culture in New Orleans was quite fascinating to me.
The series has many detractors, who consider themselves the 'jazz snobs.' They seem to think that only the 'noobs' enjoy this series. If that's true, it's only because they are looking for something that was never intended to be there. Their feeling is that more recent (post 1960 or so) jazz developments were given little screen time. Well...yeah. Duh.
In most of his multi-part documentaries, Ken Burns is not trying to do an in-depth analysis of the subjects' current merits, so much as tell the history of it, heavily-slanted on the origin story. People can discuss the merits of hard bop or fusion ad nauseam, and that would take away from what this film was trying to present. Did you notice how much time was spent on the origins of jazz from the 19th Century, years before jazz was even a musical style?
Further, in doing a history of jazz, he also presents a picture of the culture that surrounds jazz. Since jazz was the number one music in the late '20s, '30s and early '40s, he spent the vast amount of time in that period. As the popularity of jazz greatly diminished with the rise of rock and soul music in the '50s, so did this documentary's focus on it.
The basic thing to remember is that Ken Burns was trying to create a picture of the American landscape of popular music, which happened to focus on the jazz age. When jazz became a small sub-culture, the story had essentially been told. Think of it like one of the great American Experience presidential biographies on PBS. How much time are you going to spend discussing Jimmy Carter (or Ike, LBJ, Truman) after he left the presidency? Sure, he did things, and was still a figure in foreign relations for decades. But his story was no longer central. Ken Burns told that story. If there had been a 10-part follow-up to this series, it would have likely focused on rock 'n' roll, not jazz. And i bet the first 8 episodes would have been focused on pre-1970, and rightly so.
This film is not designed to give in-depth analysis of the modeern jazz scene and styles of the current day. It is an origin story. Ken Burns paints very classic American stories. Baseball. National Parks. The Civil War. And yes, Jazz. What he is going to focus on is the time period that those things were a dominant part of American culture.
That all said, while i sometimes found Wynton Marsalis to be insightful, he often became annoying for his wild romanticism of jazz music. His poetic, and often long-winded cranial meanderings became a bit tedious after a while.
Movie Review: JAZZ - a historical view
Summary: 4 Stars
The scope of this fascinating documentary is wast; it can be defined as a rich historical look into jazz, with emphasis on earlier periods, with intense socio-cultural, economical and political comments. This said, I can very well understand why some disagree with the deemphasis on avant-garde and the huge emphasis on Louis Armstrong and swing era... (actually, I completely agree with Burns' and Marsalis' deemphasis on fusion).
There are some magnificent images and sounds, performances and testimonies here, all well directed and organized, often capturing the best /or too rarely seen/ performances by Armstrong, Goodman, Basie, Rushing, Davis, Parker and others. Actually, there's too much on swing clarinetist for my tastes - although I like both Goodman and Shaw...
This means that this is almost ideal historical introduction to jazz (although there are some mistakes - for instance, the narration lives the impression that Freddie Green came with Basie from Kansas City are, which is false).
Since I am mostly interested into "classical" and "early modern" jazz, this would draw 5 stars from me but... well... how should one put it? There's too much Marsalis in it!
Don't get me wrong - I'm a big admirer of Wynton's work but, since he was a senior consultant to Ken Burns, he should have restrained himself a bit (and even his brother Branford has a prominent role in some episodes)... In the end of the last episode Wynton is presented as a some sort of succesor to the elder giants of jazz /which is probably not wrong/, without giving enough tribute to Art Blakey and the trumpeters that preceded Wynton in The Jazz Messengers...
It would be prudent to restrain himself a bit, although he is an articulate and persuasive advocate of jazz (as he generally is)... But, since this was produced in 2000 it is a great pity the surviving participants of jazz development were underutilized (Doc Cheatham, Lionel Hampton, Clark Terry...) or not interviewed at all (Hank Jones, Frank Wess, Snooky Young, Ron Carter, Ray Brown, Freddie Hubbard...).
Since Artie Shaw, for instance, was so well presented, it creates a disbalance. So, in spite of the great enjoyment this film gave me, I'm trying to be objective - only 4 stars.
Movie Review: Entertaining & Interesting, But Not Fully Encompassing Of Jazz!!
Summary: 4 Stars
I enjoyed this 10 volume documentary by the legendary director/producer
Ken Burns, but my only point of contention is that it isn't all emcompassing
and completely ignores some pivotal figures & eras in jazz while bearly
scanning over others. Of course I do understand the editing process as well
as the huge costs for bringing in more interview subjects and all of the legal
and logistical nightmares of putting something like this together, so I'm not
going to be too harsh in my assessment of Mr. Burns' overall product.
It is still very entertaining and interesting, the subjects (artists) he does cover,
along with the accompanying music of classic jazz fare of the 20's, 30's, 40's
and up to the early 70's were done well. Though people like Wes Montgomery were ignored,
Django Rheinhardt was only eluded to for a few seconds, Bessie Smith too, Billy Strayhorne's
brilliance outside of his collab with Duke Ellington wasn't emphasized enough for me.
Too bad also, he didn't include a more in depth analysis of the 70's jazz fusion movement
other than Miles Davis' "Bitches Brew"...would've been nice if Roy Ayers Ubiquity,
Lonnie Liston Smith, Spyro Gyra, Return To Forever, George Duke, Norman Connors and others
who were prominent in the mid 70's to early 80's had got some face time too!
As for singers, Sarah Vaughn was only touched on, Dinah Washington was ignored,
as was Dakota Stanton, Big Maybelle, Anita O'Day, Nancy Wilson, and male singers like
Little Jimmy Scott, Al Jarreau, Billy Eckstine and Joe Williams were left out too.
Some in depth coverage on latin and afro cuban jazz would've been nice too.
But to take on the whole story of JAZZ is an ambitious undertaking to say the least!
I guess someone was always going to be disappointed in some way, and he only had
10 chapters to work with to try to weave this epic story into something cohesive.
All-n-All though, I give it 4 Stars.
Movie Review: Nice Smile With a Missing Tooth!
Summary: 4 Stars
The greatest compliment to this series is that it has created a torrent of discussion and the debates are still raging. I enjoy this series so much, I watch it nearly every year.
My critique has been discussed at length, so I summarize this way:
I appreciate Wynton Marsalis' discussion of the jazz with which he is familiar. This does not qualify Wynton Marsalis to decide, for everyone else, what constitutes jazz when the question of "fusion" comes up.
Much of fusion, both then and now, is largely rhythm section dominated (electric bass, drums, guitar and keys). Therefore, it may have been difficult for a Marsalis, a horn player, to appreciate.
Why refer to Marsalis and not Burns? Because nearly all of Burns' analysis depends upon the viewpoint of Wynton Marsalis.
Fusion (I call it "hard fusion") is not that difficult to document nor define, but Burns exits the discussion altogether when the subject of fusion is mentioned. Perhaps Ken Burns did not want Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Al DiMeola, John McLaughlin, Billy Cobham or Stanley Clarke to have the last word on how Fusion helped to keep the creative juices of jazz flowing.
Not all of fusion is rhythm instruments, however. A case could have been made for tenor sax player, Michael Brecker (RIP), who appeared regularly on many of fusion's finest releases including his own group, Steps Ahead. Brecker went on to produce outstanding post-bop jazz and could very likely have credited fusion for the role that it may have played in his developmental journey.
Instead we get a conspicuous argument from silence on the matter.
By the time Jazz went to the presses, classic fusion had already been established as a part of the story whether the Marsalis brothers approved it or not.
Ken Burns Jazz, without an attempt to account for fusion, is like a very pretty smile with a missing front tooth.