At 03:15 PM 2/6/01 -0800, Leslie N. Shill wrote:
>without bringing the Marsalis Brothers into the same atmosphere as Miles and
>Trane or even comparing them, there is simply no getting away from the fact
>that both of them are very talented musicians. Now, you may not like the
>music that they play or even their attitudes but lighten up just a little, I
Leslie,
You make valid points, all of them. I think my initial email was a strong
negative reaction to the quote by the record exec, not as much about the
Marsalis brothers per se.
>I started off watching this series with a negative attitude about Wynton
>although I have always held Branford in high esteem, and as the series
>progressed I must say that I changed my mind about the man. His passion and
>enthusiasm was no act and his sincerity was pretty obvious to me!
I started off just about where you were. My respect for both Marsalis
brothers _as musicians_ is very high, but not nearly as high as my respect
is for Coltrane or Davis. What I don't like about Wynton, which was only
cemented more firmly as the documentary progressed, was his "ownership" of
"jazz" and his attitudes towards the areas of jazz that he doesn't
value. I don't take away anything from his passion and enthusiasm of jazz
in general- of course he's one of the most important jazz musicians alive
today. That said, I didn't like him before (as a person- I had a chance to
meet him and hear him speak while at university 9 years ago) and I like him
even less now. Burns used him too often and inappropriately- that's at the
heart of my issue with Wynton and the documentary.
>It is a bit sad to me that a music fan such as yourself would be subscribe
>to narrow theories about musical personalities, I mean this is not Billy
>Corgan we are talking about here but two really fine musicians. People like
We all have different tastes in music and with respect to jazz, I'm much
happier listening to be-bop than I am to big band or swing. My tastes run
towards 'Trane and Miles and away from most of the stuff that either of the
Marsalis brothers are known for. For me, musicianship and musician's
personalities are intertwined. For most of the musicians that I love, I
don't know practically anything about their personalities, so I can only
really evaluate them by their music. Wynton it seems, (even before the
documentary) loves to give his verbal position on jazz almost as much as he
likes to play the music. So there's a lot of his writings and opinions
that we've seen and read and so I know a lot more about what he values. I
guess another way to put it is that I love the message (i.e. the music) but
I didn't appreciate the messenger (i.e. Burns or Wynton.)
>For the life of me I am unable
>to recall the Marsalis Brothers ever being compared to either of these two
>throughout the series and while I might certainly have spent the footage and
The record exec compared Miles and Coltrane to the Marsalis brothers, not
I. I was reacting to that comparison by the Columbia record exec.
>There is nothing, to my way of thinking, to stop anyone doing more
>documentaries on Jazz and the constellation of musicians in it's firmament.
>The path is open to any creative person with the get-up and go of Ken Burns
>and his associates to do it, in fact I think that this series has really
Here I'll disagree vehemently. I truly believe that Burns' legacy is that
the topics he covers (like Oliver Stone to an extent) end up becoming a
part of "history" because of the size and scope of his projects and the
impact of media on the collective consciousness of today.
There's no way another documentarian would be able to drum up the corporate
sponsorship to do a different take on either baseball, the Civil War, or
jazz (at least for another decade, if not a lot longer.) So Burns might
say, "oh this is just my take on this subject," but it ends up becoming
canonical - that, in essence, is what I have a problem with. Burns
obviously knows how important and influential his work has been in the
past. I wish he had done more homework before shooting Jazz- to educate
himself further so he wouldn't have had to lean on his commentators as
often as he did.
And to prove my point, let's list all the large documentaries that have
debuted on the topic of the Civil War or baseball since the Burns
documentaries on those topics came out. That list is real short...none?
>OK, neither of them has yet composed pieces like Trane and Miles did
>but that does not make them less.
It does make them less to me when Wynton's (and other commentators')
_comments_about_musicians that he doesn't respect end up in the
documentary. Marsalis was obviously way out of his area of expertise after
a certain point. Burns probably knew that but thought that the public
wouldn't catch it (or he was truly clueless- neither of which is positive.)
>long in other peoples compositions, I am strongly for something like this
>series that brought the real thing to the ears, hearts and minds of people
>who could really use the exposure to it. I loved this series and I learned
>so much from it, was it really just passe' for you?
I probably didn't watch as much of it as you did, but I just got sick and
tired of Crouch, Wynton and Glaser. I would rather have heard more from
fans who were at unforgettable concerts than from the commentators. I
wouldn't call the documentary passe', it just could have been more balanced
if Burns had given more time to some musicians and less time to Armstrong.
In closing, I do appreciate your sentiments and I do admit that my initial
reaction was...harsh, or closed-minded or exceedingly negative. I just
don't appreciate it when someone else (in this case Burns) ends up defining
a genre as broad as jazz is, even if he meant to cover only part of
it. Perhaps he should have spent more time educating himself about jazz
rather than leaning on his commentators as much as he did. Or use
commentators more appropriately- i.e. Marsalis for the parts that he's the
expert on and others on the areas of jazz that Marsalis obviously doesn't
value as highly (but I do!) I hope that makes more sense than my initial
quick and nasty note :-)
Let's keep the discussion flowing,
Gen
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