Matt Kassel: Ken Burns Response

Although I haven’t seen the whole Ken Burns Jazz documentary, I inevitably have conflicted feelings about the film after our discussion on Friday. It’s clear that regardless of how good or bad or accurate or self-righteous or academic or long or short this film was, critics and jazz nuts were going to be talking about it.

But the nature of the film—due to its corporate sponsorship, its mass-marketing strategies, and its 19-hour, segmented debut on PBS—demanded that the critics and jazz nuts pay a little more attention.

The discussion we had seemed to confront the merits of populist appeal versus the merits of scholarly integrity. Ken Burns Jazz, it is safe to say, leaned more toward populist appeal, with its notions of American originality, jazz as democracy, and its pigeonholing storyline that rendered interesting facts subservient to the Burns-Ward view of history.

But personally—and I can’t say my feelings are final because I am not fully ensconced in the jazz world—I am less offended by Ken Burns Jazz than I thought I would be after slogging through those articles we read. This is not because I am grateful that at least some who would not have known a thing about jazz were exposed to it through this documentary. (I think that might apply for a documentary like, say, the Buena Vista Social Club, whose music few would have known about—besides a few eccentric aficionados—were it not for that film.)

I don’t think anything presented by NPR or PBS is bound to reach a mass youth audience—which is probably the most important audience for jazz to reach in order for it to gain some steam. Ben Ratliff has written that jazz is not so popular today because its potential audience does not feel as though it owns this music. In this case, ownership implies cultural relevance, understanding, empathy. And we all know Burns Jazz did wonders for jazz by cutting down the last forty years to a vignette of modern musicians that seemed more like an embalming or some forged obituary than a glance to the future.

But despite its historical inaccuracies and hagiographical bombast about genius and American bravery, Ken Burns Jazz seems indicative of the general perception people who know no better have of jazz. I don’t think the documentary was a reinforcement of that general perception, just a restatement. So in that sense, it wasn’t as much a disservice to jazz as it seems.

There are so many talented, young musicians out there today. And I think their music is more accessible than some of the indie-rock bands that are proliferating. That’s not because I’m a jazz fan; it’s because I think jazz is enlivening and full of emotion and that it can reach many people. That’s not to say it has, or that it will.

I’m just saying I think people who will find jazz will find jazz, and those who won’t, well, it’s not necessarily society’s fault, or their fault, or jazz’s fault. And in fact, to consider it a fault is to exalt jazz. For a long time, I listened almost exclusively to jazz. (I still listen almost exclusively to jazz. I consider this more a weakness than a strength.) I wasn’t surprised that my friends didn’t dig jazz as much as I did. They respected it, as a lot of people do, but that doesn’t go very far in terms of enjoyment.

But I’m sure that if I brought someone who did not care or know much about jazz to the Village Vanguard on any night of the week, then that person would change his mind about the shape of jazz to come.