"Victor Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>[Branford] mentioned that he thought Ken Burns was right to leave out the
>>last thirty years in his documentary.
Here's an alternate view: Is it just coincidence that Wynton Marsalis, senior
creative consultant on the film, and his committee (Stanley Crouch, Albert
Murray), don't recognize the validity of jazz of the last 30 years? Ken Burns
admittedly knew nothing about jazz going into the project, in fact, Wynton
had suggested the topic to him and was subsequently tapped to mentor the
film, thereby imprinting his own highly skewed agenda on the "history" of
jazz, rendering it more of a museum piece than a living art. It's no wonder
that for nearly 20 years Wynton's own music has largely been a rehashing of
jazz styles from long gone decades, relying on other's ideas instead of his
own.
Burns claimed that we don't have enough distance to judge music of the last
30 years ... bullshit! In 1950, didn't we already know that Ellington and
Armstrong were geniuses? Did we need another 50 years to assess them? Of
course not. Great documentaries are made about recent history *all the time.*
The first 60 years of jazz fill 17 hours of film, while the entire last 40
years is relegated to the last two hours. Why? Because Wynton and his cronies
largely dismiss this music, and Burns bought what they were selling. Here's
but one flagrant omission: Bill Evans, who is regarded as one of the most
influential pianists of the last 40 years by nearly everyone *except* Wynton
et al, was given a brief one-sentence mention. That's a crime.
Now, Branford is a somewhat different case ... he is much more talented and
creative than his brother, not nearly as dogmatic and stilted in his agenda,
much more open minded, and his own music is more forward-looking and much of
it very beautiful. But he still buys into the party line to a certain extent,
as evidenced by those remarks.
By the way, here is Jarrett's letter to the NYTimes, with which I agree:
::Regarding Ken Burns's (or is it Wynton Marsalis's?) "Jazz": Now that
::we've been put through the socioeconomic racial forensics of a
::jazz-illiterate historian and a self-imposed jazz expert prone to
::sophomoric generalizations and ultraconservative politically correct
::(for now) utterances, not to mention a terribly heavy-handed
::narration (where every detail takes on the importance of major
::revelation) and weepy-eyed nostalgic reveries, can we have some films
::about jazz by people who actually know and understand the music
::itself and are willing to deal comprehensively with the last 40 years
::of this richest of American treasures?
The snide comment from Branford that Jarrett should "shut the hell up!"
unless he came up with 30 million dollars to make his own documentary is
bullshit ... one isn't otherwise allowed to comment or criticize? What is
Burns/Wynton ... the damn government? My country, right or wrong? Fuck that.
Hey, for 30 million bucks, you'd think they could have given more than 10% of
the duration of the film to 40% of its subject.
-Fred Simon
