"OT" Regarding JAZZ (Ken Burn's Series)

[KILLINFO@aol.com]

Hi All. 

I thought I'd send this in as sort of food for thought (and comment). A 
good friend of mine who is a jazz drummer sent it to me. It's written by 
another friend who's a fairly visible music journalist. 

Please no flame wars. The opinions contained herein are not neccessarily 
mine to begin with (althought I share a similar view on some points).

Have fun,

T.Killian

________________________________________________________

By Josef Woodard

KEN BURNS JAZZ, ROYALLY: 

This just in: jazz, it turns out, is dead. The fact was duly reported by 
Ken Burns’s 10-part PBS documentary, called, with encyclopedic sweep, 
JAZZ. Apparently, jazz reached an early apex, in the feel-good throes of 
the Swing Era. Then, corruptive influences spoiled the party, including 
heroin (the program is careful to index those musicians who used the 
stuff) and a protracted period of confusion, from 1960-2000, which barely 
even deserves mentioning, let alone chronicling.

Thankfully, in the early ’80s, the young wonder, suit-donning Wynton 
Marsalis, came along to save the music, with chops aplenty and a fierce 
reactionary bent, sniffing at the guises of fusion, avant-garde, or 
anything that didn’t suit his shamelessly antiquarian biases about the 
music (Marsalis, like Ken Burns, is a necrophiliac, saddened by having 
been born too late).

That’s the story of JAZZ. And it’s an unconscionable crock. The infamous 
finale of JAZZ, in which roughly half of this great music’s evolution was 
scorned and many of its most important elements patently ignored, screened 
last week. At the IAJE conference in NYC in January, coproducer Lynn 
Novick appeared in a panel discussion on JAZZ (Burns was too battle-weary 
to show his face). She fended off frustrations about the program’s myopia 
by asking us to suspend judgment until we’d seen the controversial episode.

We have seen it and are more incensed than expected. We have seen the 
sleazy docu-tactics in attempting to discredit the Art Ensemble of Chicago 
and Cecil Taylor “pettily sneered at by Gene Lees and Branford Marsalis” 
and how they dismiss Miles Davis’s hugely influential electric period 
out-of-hand, as if an outgrowth of Miles’s lust for fans and goofy 
clothes. JAZZ patently ignores important jazz musicians from the ’70s and 
beyond, including John McLaughlin, Weather Report, and Pat Metheny, who 
may be the most significant living jazz musician in terms of straddling 
many worlds. They inexcusably gloss over Keith Jarrett, one of the giants 
of the current scene (and, it should be noted, a foe of the show’s 
puppeteer Marsalis clan).

We have seen how, in one laughable sequence, they tried to quickly survey 
current artists, flashing still shots under a Cassandra Wilson vamp that 
even she would admit has little to do with jazz. In short, Burns, et al. 
amplify their contempt for anything after, and much before, Coltrane’s 
death in 1967. The final episode is a blight, which negates the virtues of 
the project’s earlier segments, and certainly the most infuriatingly 
imbalanced, culturally suspicious program ever screened on PBS. We need to 
start a letter campaign to the irresponsible parties.

Warning, before we go any further: this column may be tainted. It’s being 
penned by one of those “jazz critics” who Burns repeatedly claims (even in 
a pathetic post-show appearance by the mop-top marauder) are an 
insignificant, elitist minority finding fault in his efforts. He’s badly 
mistaken. Jazz lovers take their music seriously, not as an idle 
diversion, and we’re not amused when half the music’s history is casually 
slandered.

Burns, ignorant about jazz, but intrigued by its narrative possibilities 
(think of the archival imagery!), apparently fell under the spell of the 
notorious charmer and arch-conservative Wynton Marsalis and his sidekick 
Stanley Crouch. Somebody neglected to alert Burns to the dark side of his 
advisors’ agenda, that, in fact, they want to kill the progressive spirit 
of jazz and turn it into a museum piece.

Then there’s also the carpet-bagger factor to consider. Burns is a good 
filmmaker, and has also learned a trick rare in the parallel universe of 
documentary-making — turning a tidy profit. Through profits on albums, 
books, T-shirts, whatever, Burns stands to rake in more lucre than most 
jazz musicians would make in two lifetimes. And, in a sense, he knows less 
about jazz than when he started. What the Marsalis mafia failed to impart 
on him is that, yes, jazz is America’s great music, and it’s very much 
alive and kicking and evolving, right under Burnsalis.