8.6 /10 1 Votes
Genre Documentary Directed by Ken Burns Original language(s) English First episode date 8 January 2001 Narrated by Keith David Language English | 8.5/10 IMDb Written by Geoffrey Ward Country of origin United States No. of episodes 10 Final episode date 31 January 2001 Director Ken Burns | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Jazz is a 2000 documentary miniseries, directed by Ken Burns. It was broadcast on PBS in 2001, and was released on DVD and VHS in January 2, 2001 by the same company. Its chronological and thematic episodes provided a history of the jazz emphasizing innovative composers and musicians and American history. Swing musicians Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington are the central figures, "providing the narrative thread around which the stories of other major figures turn"; several episodes discussed the later contributions of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie to bebop, and of Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and John Coltrane to free and cool jazz. Nine episodes surveyed forty-five years (1917–1961), leaving the final episode to cover forty years (1961–2001). The documentary examines the impacts of racial segregation and drugs on jazz.
Contents
Overview
The documentary concerned the history of jazz music in the United States, from its origins at the turn of the 20th century to the present day. It was narrated by Keith David and featured interviews with present-day musicians and critics such as trumpeter Wynton Marsalis (also the artistic director and co-producer of Jazz) and critics Gary Giddins and Stanley Crouch. Music critic and African-American historian Gerald Early was also a consultant. Broadcaster and producer Phil Schaap was interviewed briefly. Jazz was the longest jazz documentary yet produced.
Visually, Jazz was in the same style as Ken Burns's previous works: slowly panning and zooming shots of photographs are mixed with period movie sequences, accompanied by music of, and commentary on, the period being examined. Between these sequences, present-day jazz figures provided anecdotes and explained the defining features of the major musicians' styles. Duke Ellington's "I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart" (1938) was a recurring motif at the opening and closing of individual episodes of the series.
The documentary focused on a number of major musicians: Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington are the central figures, "providing the narrative thread around which the stories of other major figures turn", among them Sidney Bechet, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
A number of companion CDs were released simultaneously.
Episodes
Each two-hour episode of the ten episodes of Jazz covered a different era:
Response and criticism
Jazz was nominated for several awards, including multiple Emmy Awards.
Positive reviews
Among the positive critics, Charles Paul Freund wrote that Jazz "is filled with rewards, many of them proffered unintentionally ... Burns's documentary gifts are not visionary, analytical, nor even properly historical. Rather, he is a talented biographer, and his films are most effective when he is able to present an overarching narrative in terms of the biographical detail of that narrative's participants." Jason Van Bergen declared, "The nearly 19 hours of documentary coverage contained in the Jazz series unravels like a fine wine" and due to the series' attention to detail, "a complete discussion of every episode in Ken Burns's Jazz would be better suited for a Master's Thesis" than to his brief review. Van Bergen sums up, writing, "Burns's encyclopedic rendering of the growth of jazz cannot be questioned. Followers of the music will need this set on their shelves; but perhaps slightly more surprisingly, serious students of American history may also require the set to supplement their versions of the past century."
Negative reviews
The series also received criticisms from reviewers. Critic Jeffrey St. Clair wrote,
Ken Burns's interminable documentary, Jazz, starts with a wrong premise and degenerates from there ... Burns is a classicist, who is offended by the rawer sounds of the blues, its political dimension and inescapable class dynamic. Instead, Burns fixates on a particular kind of jazz music that appeals to his PBS sensibility: the swing era. It's a genre of jazz that enables Burns to throw around phrases such as 'Ellington is our Mozart.' He sees jazz as an art form in the most culturally elitist sense, as being a museum piece, beautiful but dead, to be savored like a stroll through a gallery of paintings by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Critic David Adler wrote, "Burns has done a respectable job of introducing pre-1960 jazz history to a wide audience. In 'Episode Ten,' however, he gives viewers a disastrously skewed portrait of the creative lineage that has produced much of today's best jazz."
Stu Vandermark's detailed review of Jazz contended that there were substantial factual errors in the documentary. Notably, Vandermark noted that Jazz repeats the idea that jazz music was created in New Orleans; on the contrary, writes Vandermark, "no one really knows where jazz was born ... It is likely that the music evolved spontaneously in different cities around the U.S. wherever there were a few thousand black people making lives for themselves."
Compilation albums
On November 7, 2000, 22 companion single-artist compilation albums, all titled Ken Burns Jazz, were released by the Verve and Columbia/Legacy labels. A five CD box set Ken Burns Jazz: The Story of America's Music was also released, along with a single album sampler of that box set (The Best of Ken Burns Jazz).
The following albums were released by Verve:
The following albums were released by Columbia/Legacy:
In 2002, Columbia also released two low-priced box sets, each containing three of the previously released single-artist collections.