Gretchen--Post 3--Ken Burns Jazz

As a whole, I believe the seemingly endless controversy that surrounds Ken Burns’ Jazz reflects many of the major overarching debates that permeate the jazz community. What is jazz? Who should/should not be included within the jazz community? Should jazz history follow a linear, great-man approach, or be more interdisciplinary? Should social histories of jazz take precedence over music-theoretical analyses? Is jazz an art form? How do we decide which pieces should be included within the jazz canon? Is it possible to separate jazz from race? The list goes on. I think it is safe to say that until these issues become resolved—which they probably never all will—Ken Burns’ Jazz will serve as a ripe field for criticism, controversy, and debate.

As Dr. Porter has mentioned frequently, everything made or interpreted by humans has a political agenda. Regardless of how hard we might try to make a history factual and completely unbiased, as Ken Burns’ production team termed “getting it right,” we will always bring our own viewpoints and biases into what we are writing, interpreting, or presenting. In Jazz, the agendas of Wynton Marsalis, Stanley Crouch, Ralph Ellison, and Albert Murray saturate the narrative, emphasizing jazz as art music, American music, and inextricably linked with the struggles and triumphs of the African-American race. Admittedly, the documentary, while beautifully executed, has its limitations. Its incessant use of absolutisms (“the greatest,” “the best,” “the only”), idealistic portrayals of its heroes, biased representation of different jazz styles and artists, and sometimes less-than-accurate “facts” are but some of these. Nevertheless, what history does not contain biases, misinterpreted facts, and a story to fit the agenda of the writer? While I am by no means advocating a less-than-objective approach to historical research, I also feel that it is naïve and somewhat immature to completely disregard Jazz—clearly one of the most influential jazz histories available—by nitpicking its faults and overlooking its assets. As I said in class, I can see both sides of the controversy. When I was first exposed to this documentary, I was coming from the perspective of the general audience. While I was trained in classical music, I knew little to nothing about jazz, and was unaware of the extent of style and artist omission that has caused so much fury among jazz critics and scholars. At first watch, I was very impressed and completely drawn in to the stories, music, and history. Now, as a graduate student studying jazz, I am much more aware of the limitations of these films, and wholeheartedly accept the consideration of “what is missing” as a means to build more effective histories in the future. However, to return to my point—there is much that even jazz scholars can learn from Ken Burns Jazz. The point is, the documentary has been made. It has been distributed, people have bought it, people have loved it, and it is not going anywhere. As Dr. Porter suggested, it has real cultural significance. It is not going to be recalled like a bad produce crop. Therefore, in a much more productive approach than the “spot what’s wrong with Ken Burns’ Jazz” game, we can turn the missing pieces into a foundation for our further study. Our job as scholars is to fill in those missing pieces, so the public can have as much access to information as possible. If anything, Jazz helped open up minds, making audiences more receptive to the information that we have yet to share with them.