As a jazz noob, it would be nice if someone with experience could tell me the quality of this documentary. Ken burns is good at documentaries, but does he know enough about jazz? I find the series interesting, but have my doubts.

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>> ^mauz15:
As a jazz noob, it would be nice if someone with experience could tell me the quality of this documentary. Ken burns is good at documentaries, but does he know enough about jazz? I find the series interesting, but have my doubts.


The first couple of episodes are quite good, and give a decent overview of the beginnings of jazz. But as it gets closer to the end of the series, he gets bogged down in conservatism, and gives a quite reactionary view of modern jazz. The problem is that it depends too much on the interviews with Wynton Marsalis. It would have been better with some more diversity among the sources.

I think most musicologists find the documentary quite lacking, but as a layman's introduction to the early history of jazz it's quite decent.

It's well put together and contains a lot of great music and video clips that can serve as an introduction to the diversity of the earlier forms of this genre.

I think this quote from Jeffrey St. Clair sums up the brunt of the criticism:

"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 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."

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(TV_series)#Negative_reviews

well I'm enjoying the series immensely. serious thanks mauz for bringing it to the sift, I wanted to go out this evening and none of the usual folks were available, this made my night.

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