By Sandy Langer
AAJ: As you might say may, that's the nature of the material. Some people might see it from particular perspectives, and not necessarily understand your intention.
LN: I can't really respond to that--framed that way. I can talk about some of the criticisms, and how we addressed decisions we made in the film. But I can't really speak about that broad a question, because I don't feel that we are positing counter-narrative to the perceived history of this music. I think we're very much in the mainstream of respected jazz musicians, about who was important and what they did.
AAJ: Then what other kinds of counter-narrative might have been presented to make Jazz even more inclusive?
LN: We could have told many, many more stories--and included many, many more musicians--but we had to make a film... not a book, an encyclopedia, or a magazine article where you can just mention people. We were trying to make a film that would reach people who don't know anything about jazz. And we thought it was more important to get to know the 25 or 30 most significant artists, rather than get to know 50 or 200 very superficially. That's the choice we made: to use the medium of film as a story-telling vehicle, and as an artistic framework.
We could have included countless stories of artists--and sometimes it's a little bit arbitrary--but we only had so much time, and we had to tell the story well. Other stories that we wanted to tell ended up on the cutting room floor. However, we never tried to be so inclusive that we would tell every story--we never claimed to do that or tried too. That was never our intention.
Other films on the history of jazz tend to just say, "and in the band there was so-and-so and so-and-so." That's good if you already care and know about it, but it's just meaningless for someone who isn't already deeply steeped in it. That's what we were trying to balance. We've gotten responses from viewers who didn't know about jazz before. They said, "I can't believe I didn't know this!" That was gratifying. I think that if we had gone too far the other way, those people would not have watched the series. And I wouldn't have blamed them.
AAJ: What were some of the most memorable moments during production?
LN: A production like this has so many stages to it, and there are so many moments that are memorable--because it's a process of discovery for all of us. So sometimes it's a moment in the editing room. For example, I'd interviewed singer Jon Hendricks four years before, and our editor had put together a section explaining what bebop was. He's telling you on camera why the phrasing was different, and how the rhythmic emphasis was different, in a particular song. We've got him singing along with a tune in his head... and Charlie Parker is playing music that responds to what he's singing, and you can hear both really well. It becomes a situation where one plus one equals five! And that is exhilarating for film makers. In moments like that you realize that you have a film. It's not just a collection of material--this is something that's going to become a film.
AAJ: So you're layering and deepening the experience.
LN: Yeah, and things are adding up differently than what you could have ever planned before you started. When we decided to interview Frankie Manny and Norma Miller, for example, I hadn't met them; I'd talked to them on the phone. They came up to the Lennox Lounge and sat down, and they were kind of quiet and subdued. Norma was, as usual, her very effusive self. And then Dave and I started asking some questions, and they just lit up and started talking to each other as much as to the camera or to us. We put that material together with '30s footage of the Savoy Ballroom and Chick Webb in Harlem.
All of a sudden it began to feel like a shade had been lifted. You were looking through a window into a world that was so real and vibrant once, and is now so completely gone. I felt like we were blowing on the coals of the past, and they were coming back to life. And those kind of moments are very exciting!
But that occurs throughout the process of meeting interesting people. I spent quite a bit of time with Artie Shaw over the course of the project --interviewing him, going back to interview him again, getting his photographs, giving them back to him... I just spent time with him and heard his music, and thought about this man that I'm meeting now and what he was before. Hearing him talk about his life and his ideas and his perspective: those are the conversations you treasure, because it's a privilege to get to meet people like that and have them open up their life a little bit for you
AAJ: How did you choose the images you used in Jazz? What kind of criteria did you use in deciding on appropriate film clips, stills and so on?
LN: That's a very broad question which is a little hard to answer briefly. We cast our net very wide, and we tried to find still photography: both of the musicians we were talking about and, if possible, a particular moment in time when they were playing in a certain place or certain circumstance.
AAJ: Did you get these images from personal collections and archives?
LN: Yes, of course. But a lot of the photographs in the film are not actually of jazz. If we're talking about America in the '20s, for example, we're going to want to see the jazz age: flappers, Harlem, whatever. So we had to dig pretty deep to try to find photographs that would help us bring the past to life and put the jazz music and the musicians in context.
If we're talking about Ethel Waters (who was born in Chester, Pennsylvania), we don't have a picture of her as a child. So we have to show something else, and we use a picture of Chester, Pennsylvania in 1900. Or if Bessie Smith is talking about life in the rural south, we want to present the people she is singing to and singing about. So we had to go and research American life throughout the 20th century in a variety of ways.
AAJ: So you tried to put the whole experience in context.
LN: That was a huge part of our effort. We were looking for photographs from jazz art photographers and musicians, and various other jazz collections. Frank Driggs in Brooklyn has an incredible collection. He probably gave us a third or a half of the jazz photographs that we used--I don't know--a large number. But we got photographs from all the best art photographers. And they were willing to share their images with us for far less than they would charge for the use of a photograph in a calendar or whatever, because it was a way to showcase their work and get it out there. And so we based our decision for each image on a variety of criteria: the quality of the image, the composition, the content. We have 2,400 images in the film. There's another 10,000 that we filmed but didn't include in the film, and another 50,000 that we left out.
AAJ: How were artistic decisions made regarding artists used for photography? Some people thought you should have included more visual art like Bob Thompson, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence or even Stuart Davis.
LN: Right. We did have a pretty good collection of work that had been inspired by jazz, and that depicted jazz. But it just didn't end up working in the narrative that we were trying to tell. We tried it--believe me, we did! I love all those artists' work, and Mondrian is another one. It just became something that pulled you out of the story and became more of an essay about art and jazz. And that would have been a real issue, and I hope someone makes that film... I think that it would be amazing, really interesting.
We had a section about the beat poets and abstract expressionist painters, and how they were inspired by jazz and what they perceived to be the spontaneity of jazz. But that section only ended up in the home video. That episode was too long to include in the film. But we did have a section on DeKooning and some other abstract expressionist paintings in it. So, you know, it's in there, here and there. There's an episode on Harlem rent parties, and we have some wonderful paintings from the Harlem Renaissance and life in Harlem, but you can't do it all. But this is not the last word that's ever going to be said about jazz in American life. I think it will inspire a lot of other people to take parts of it and pursue them in their own way, which would be wonderful.
AAJ: Yes, that would be great. How has your perception of jazz changed as a result of making this documentary?
LN: Well, I have to say I really was not knowledgeable about a lot of jazz, particularly the pre-war music. So my perception of jazz has developed in the course of the film, and there have been so many discoveries that it's really hard to say. When I first began the research, I assumed we'd have to go to Africa to film African drums or something--and was quickly disabused of that. I was really starting from such a base of ignorance that I don't [big sigh] think I can say. The discoveries I've made are to understand some of the artists whose work has been obscured by time--Sidney Bechet, Jelly Roll Morton. Those people were not well known. And Ethel Waters, too: I really was not that familiar with her early work. So there are a lot of artists whose work I just had not heard.
AAJ: You had some great film clips: really early Hollywood film clips that I had seen as a photography historian. But these were really wonderful.
LN: Well, Peter Miller, who is the other producer on the series, was in charge of all the footage research. Jazz film collectors who make their work available--license it out--had gone and collected a lot of these jazz performances in the film. So some of that stuff is not that hard to find, but some of it is very obscure.
AAJ: If you were to make a sequel to the documentary and include artists from 1960 to the present, which artists would you be certain to include and why?
LN: Well, the film really does go up to about 1975, so we already include John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Dexter Gordon, Archie Shepp. It's not as though we ignore them--and then we do talk about some artists that are active today. I'm going to punt on that one. I think the verdict is still out on who's going to be important 25 years from now, out of artists who are active today. So in terms of the criteria by which people judge, I think that is the biggest question.
I don't necessarily agree or disagree, but a lot of people talk about the idea that no one's doing anything really new--that everything that's being done has been done before. I've heard that many times. Or the stuff that is being done: what makes you think that that's a jazz musician? It comes down to how you define jazz, and how you define what's enduring or valuable.
Joshua Redman said the other day, "Now look, I don't think we should be expecting the next Charlie Parker or the next Louis Armstrong." This art form has gone through a cycle, or several cycles, or a lifetime--whatever. These great, great artists have come and gone. Maybe that's not the point: maybe we shouldn't be expecting another Miles Davis or Charlie Parker. We should just be celebrating the artists who are out here, trying to work within this art form.
You can do the same thing in painting, too. Once you've gone to a white canvas, or a toilet bowl, or whatever, where are you going to go? I just don't feel really qualified, frankly, to make that judgment. I'm not a musicologist and I'm not a musician. And I don't think the passage of time has happened enough to give us enough distance to say whose records you'll want to put on thirty years from now.
AAJ: You really think records?
LN: Well, there'll be these really tiny chips, or whatever we'll be listening to. I think there are going to be people around thirty years from now, who are active today, who will be just as important as we think they are. But I really can't say.
AAJ: Were you surprised by the passionate discussion this documentary has generated?
LN: Not at all. We were very happy that the film has generated so much interest and so much feeling... for lack of a better word, so much buzz. You have a sense of a happening, a cultural event that people are interested in talking to each other about and arguing about. That's fabulous!
As for the kind of discussions that went on within the very narrow provinces of people deeply steeped in the jazz scene... I think some people who criticized the film hadn't seen the film. We got lots of letters saying: "How did you leave out Dexter Gordon?" "How did you leave out John Coltrane?" "How could you leave out Bill Evans?" And we didn't leave them out. But you haven't seen the film, obviously, if you're writing us that letter.
It was frustrating that before the film was shown, there was a lot of static and back-channel communications that we got through the internet. And we even had some people criticizing the film who hadn't seen it yet. But I think things changed once the film actually got out there, and people got a chance to see it. I did hear from some people who visit jazz chat rooms (which I absolutely do not do) that there was a lot of posting from people saying, "Oh, you know it's really not that bad." And that's always part of it: letting the film speak for itself. Watch the film, and don't expect to love every minute of it--but take a step back and see that this film introduces people who know nothing about jazz to Louis Armstrong. Is there anything wrong with that? And, as Gary Giddins said, "What's the downside in that? What's bad about that?"
AAJ: Do you and Ken Burns share similar tastes in Jazz?
LN: That's a good question. To some degree, yes, and to some degree, no. I think we both have very broad tastes. I guess I would probably gravitate more or less to the same material, but... I don't know. That's a good question. You know, if you have your favorite record on for three or four months, then you'll put something else on. We've been exposed to so much great music that I guess we like all of it. Time will tell which record or CD I'll put on ten years from now.
AAJ: Yes, right. Because some people like progressive jazz better. Other people like fusion...
LN: I think that music is so broad, and there are so many different ways to listen to separate selves of it, that it depends on your mood what you want to listen to. Or the context... if you're sitting quietly reading a book, or if you're dancing, or if you're having a party, or if you're in the car. There are so many different contexts in which we listen to music--so I think that's a little hard to say.
AAJ: Some people disliked the fact that you ignored an inordinate number of brilliant women and Latino musicians and composers. How do you respond to these criticisms?
LN: I think I've already responded. We didn't leave people out unintentionally. We left people out intentionally, even though at times it was with great regret. It really had to do with the mechanics of the story-telling in the medium of film, and the sense that we wanted to make a film for a general audience. We couldn't tell them all. We wanted to tell a few stories well, and let the audience find an emotional/spiritual connection to the stories we were telling--rather than be the encyclopedia of jazz singers.
AAJ: So you were hoping that people would go out on their own...
LN: And they do. The past has borne out that people will say "Wow!", you know, "That was great. I want to find out more!" And they'll go and discover for themselves. As far as leaving out women... well, you know, I'm a woman. I wish there were more stories about women which were as important as the stories of Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis and John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. But sadly, in our society--for a variety of complicated reasons--there have not been women of that stature as instrumentalists in the world of jazz, or as composers. There just haven't. There are important women, but they would be included only because they are women to some degree.
We basically talk about three singers. And we didn't do as much about singers as I perhaps would have liked, but again it just came down to story telling. So it's almost as if there are way too many stories to tell--and we just really [sigh] couldn't do them all.
AAJ: Yes, people like Mary Lou Williams...
LN: Right. We did have a section on her, which unfortunately we had to cut, but it's on the home video.
AAJ: Do you think Jazz needs to do a better job selling itself?
LN: Absolutely. I think that goes without saying, but it's very difficult in the current world of popular culture for jazz to get much of a hearing... partly because of radio. There are great radio stations, but Top 40 radio is so homogenized, and the engines of popular culture are so celebrity-driven and market-driven, that it's difficult. So it's rather hard, I think.
From some of the sensitive films that we've seen, there's an audience out there that's hungry for substantive, spiritually satisfying music--which is not being provided by the Top 40. And hopefully that will grow. I think that it's also true that contemporary, progressive, avant-garde--or whatever you want to call it--music is not ever really going to have a huge audience, because it is very difficult and demanding music.
A jazz critic from Texas interviewed me, and he was quite irate that we hadn't included much about one artist. He gave me a whole long list, and he said, "I had to work really hard to understand this music. I had to come in every day and listen to this music over and over again to try and understand what they're doing. And it's not easy, you know."
I said, "Well, exactly. It isn't, and I admire you for doing it. And I'm sure it's rewarding for you, and it's wonderful, and musicians are challenged and excited to be doing it. But the fact is, if it's that difficult to understand or relate to, you're probably not going to have a huge audience. And that's okay." It's just a matter of having really realistic expectations. And avant-garde pop probably doesn't have that much of an audience either, because it's hard. So it's just a question of "Is it entertainment?" It's questions of "What is it art?", "What is the function of art in our society?", "Who are the consumers of art?"--all of that. But that being said, I think jazz could do a better job, and I think the film will help... particularly make it so people see that this is something they should find out more about.
AAJ: What's next for Florentine Films?
LN: Well, Ken has a variety of projects in the pipeline. We just finished a film on Mark Twain, Biography of Mark Twain, that's going to air sometime next year. And then he's doing another series of biographies, and a series on the national parks.
AAJ: That should be done before they get more damaged. The series on the national parks should be really interesting for you.
LN: In some ways it will be a celebration of the natural beauty of America.
