But Fred, wasn't Wynton Marsalis the producer? Producers get to make these
decisions. And why would it surprise anyone that Branford would stick up
for his younger brother's artistic decisions? Personally, I like Branford,
Wynton *AND* Keith. Maybe Branford's point is that Jazz is too small to
have a giant like Jarrett taking a big swipe at a major documentary on it.
Personally, I think it was a major coup to fund a 17 hour special at all.
Has anyone done 17 hours on country music? I can imagine it- but it would
take someone courageous and visionary to "pitch" such a project, to fund it,
to guide it. Someone who's very proud of his art form and its originators.
Someone like Wynton Marsalis.
If you think of the series as the history of Jazz from 1900 - 1960, it was
excellent. I think Ken Burns brought the same understanding of race in
America to "Jazz" that he brought to "Baseball" and "The Civil War". How
could one properly tell the story of Jazz without talking about the
abominable conditions faced by black Jazz musicans, singers, and arrangers?
To borrow a phrase, lynchings and segregation were part of the Gumbeaux of
jazz as surely as the drugs and the dancing.
I admit that I don't know enough to argue about the proper emphasis or lack
thereof of post 1960 artists like, well, Keith Jarrett and yourself, but I
don't think that you fellas were necessarily the target audience. As a jazz
neophyte, I found the sentimental aspect (to which Jarrett objected) was
well suited to helping to endear early Jazz musicians to a wide, unfamiliar
audience. Maybe Keith Jarrett felt slighted? I'm glad to read his
comments, and yours too. I think that the controversy makes "good press"
and keeps the topic alive, which is okay by me! Neat post.
My two cents.
Jim
Who formerly thought that Mangione's "Chase the Clouds Away" and
Getz/Jobim's "Desfinado" were pure jazz. Now, they sound like pop/jazz.
Not that that's a bad thing. I love lots of pop/jazz.
Fred Simon said,
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.
