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Double Bass What is it about Ken Burns?

#41
Gilbert F said:
I think it would be worth reading this short article:
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Thanks for posting this. I couldn't stop reading this article, it was extremely well thought out and written, and I feel it is a great addition to this discussion.

I also found another great article on Zilber's site, and although it is unrelated to this discussion, it spoke quite strongly to me as a bass player. Here's the link if you'd like to check it out:

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#51
Steve Killingsworth said:
I recently began reading the companion book to Ken Burns' documentary on the history of jazz. The book (at least what I have read so far) is really interesting. However, from numerous but vague comments that occasionally pop up on other threads, this film doesn't seem to be held in very high regard by jazz purists.

Being a historian/educator I am very familiar with Burns' best known project about the Civil War. While it was interesting, well made, and exposed millions to viewers to the war for the first time, it did distort some facts. For example, the film gives the impression that the war was solely about ending/preserving slavery, but most historians feel that the big issue was states' rights (with the slavery issue being a major part of that larger disagreement).

So, is there a similar problem with the jazz docmentary? I have not personally seen the film but am just curious.
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It's like Lenin said (I am the Walrus?), you look at the person who is going to to profit....

Worse than the Marsalis boys who are always a problem when they take the horn out of their mouths (even and espeically when they are right!) was the fact that is was just a Columbia records infomercial.
 
#55
I find this is an extremely interesting thread; one of those where I seem to agree with something said by almost everybody.

It strikes me that written histories are subject to the same discussions. They, too, are always histories according to somebody, and although an historian may be said to have written the definitive history of something or someone, that's only true until another historian else writes a newer and more comprehensive one. Historians have to ask themselves from what standpoint and with what scope they are going to write the history of a subject, then they write from there. Sometimes they indicate this in an introduction; sometimes they change their standpoint and scope during the writing.

I'm wondering if Ken Burns didn't write his history of jazz from the standpoint of jazz being the popular American music of the day. If so, that might explain why his film starts and stops when it does. Burns may actually have defined this scope in an intro . . . I dunno . . . I'm going to have to go back to Vol. 1 and check. Or maybe he said this in writing or in an interview somewhere.

From essentially the cakewalk and early ragtime days through, what? Cool? Modal? (I don't remember; I'm re-viewing the film now and I'm not there yet.) If Burns was presenting jazz from the standpoint of it being the popular American music of the day, then might it even be argued that he came forward well past that point? Some hold the view that jazz ceased being the popular music when people could no longer dance to it. From that perspective, while bebop opened up exciting new eras for jazz, it may have killed jazz as the popular music of the day. Maybe Burns was showing where jazz was headed when that happened?

Jazz continues its innovative journey. I'm suggesting that an historian has to start and stop somewhere, and maybe Burns' vision as the scope for his film was simply jazz as the popular American music of the day--how that came to be, and where it was headed when it ceased being so.
 
#57
As a professional historian I can say confidently that the Jazz show suffered from the same problem/strength of all the Ken Burns productions: he falls in love with a single figure charismatic figure who then dominates the proceedings uncritically. In the Civil War series it was Shelby Foote: Burns has said in interviews that for him, Foote WAS the Civil War. But any historian is going to argue that Foote has a specific interpretation that's not the only way to see the subject. Like Wynton, Foote was fundamentally conservative in his outlook and favored romantic accounts of authentic origins. Like Wynton, Foote appeared himself to be "authentic" and was presented that way by the series; as the anchor and the voice of the authentic. Wynton is a great musician and Foote is an excellent writer, but they don't own the meaning of their relative subjects.

too conservative, too wedded to all that New Orleans Gumbo hokum, too wedded to the "african American classical music" argument. all the criticisms that could be made about Wynton.

You could argue that Burns gets people interested in history, but really, with the Civil War he sold a lot of books for Shelby foote and with the Civil War series he sold a lot of reissue jazz by dead guys
 
#60
Just can't resist saying that if you knew US history as well as you know jazz you'd hate the Civil War series just as much as you hate the Jazz series. It's exactly the same problem. Foote is a virtuoso writer who has nothing new or interesting to say but who can package the familiar attractively; Wynton is a virtuoso player who has nothing new or interesting to say but can package the familiar attractively. It's a skill, no doubt about it, but it drives people who actually know something about the subject nuts. Not because it's popular, but because it's popular in the cause of reactionary conservatism.
 

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