Leslie;
Right on! I agree with all you say. It's going to be a drag when this series is over. My clubbing has been seriously curtailed, Monday thru Wednesday, at least.... (till 11 pm, at least...)
----- Original Message -----
From: Leslie N. Shill
To: Steve Catanzaro
Cc: acid
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2001 3:22 PM
Subject: Re: Jazz: Reappraisal
Steve,
I have to swing in on your tip about last night's episode! as this goes on i find myself more into it with each chapter and i must admit to being very moved even to tears by a number of things in the series. There is so much that i have learned that i did NOT know and its been just wonderful to have some of these gaps filled in. My admiration and love for so many of these musicians has grown in leaps and bounds and while it would be easy to be critical of some aspects of the series i have also re-appraised my view of the whole thing. Sure I could live with less comment from ball players but on the whole i am very drawn to the obvious love and admiration that all the commentators have for the artists featured and their music.
The Dave Brubeck comments really moved me, as a Jew who grew up in South Africa i have lived through a lot of the truly ugly facets of the human condition but i have always viewed and felt music as the one art with the intensity and depth to move currents in life as a whole and last night's episode drew that parallel well for me. the integration of the races culturally has its roots in music and i admire Ken Burns and the writers for the series in the ways in which they have made me aware of the paradigms and the shifts in them regarding music.
Many years ago, in the lounge of a hotel in a little country called Swaziland very late one night, I was fortunate enough to hear Sarah Vaughn jamming and letting off steam for an audience of perhaps ten or twenty totally enraptured people, all of whom were transported to places where notions like race were totally redundant and what really stood out was the beauty of the music and the passion of the performers, something last night's episode delivered in trumps for me.
Another facet of last night's episaode that i really loved was the detail on the interplay between bandleaders, musicians and audiences. To my way of thinking there is no language more pure than the one used by musicians extemporizing and creating spontaneously with each other.
Kudos and big shouts to Ken Burns for his creation, this is fine work! Even Wynton is making more and better sense to me as the series progresses and while he may not be as adventurous as he probably could be, there can be no doubting his true passion and love for what is known as jazz and his connection to the art form is worthy indeed. There can be no doubt that not everything about the form and not every exponent can be covered in just a few weeks but this series has really expanded my musical universe and my hat is off to Burns and all his collaborators, the strong points have been strong enough and worthwhile enough to overcome the weaknesses and have made this whole series something to treasure. I know that series ends way short of some of the artists who mean so much to me personally but what I have learned so far has expanded what i knew before in a quantum fashion.
leslie/The Power of Sound/www.kazu.org
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