Jazz: There'Ll Never Be A January Hotter Than This One: Ken Burns - Interview

Interview, Jan-April, 2001 by Patrick Giles

Over ten nights and nineteen hours, January's airwaves will jive, stomp, and swing to arguably the greatest music ever made in America. African slaves dancing and drumming in early-nineteenth century New Orleans, the trumpeting perfection of Louis Armstrong, the tragic fates of Billie Holiday, Bix Beiderbecke, and Charlie Parker--it's all in Jazz, the latest PBS epic from director Ken Burns. Built on Geoffrey C. Ward's comprehensive and deeply moving script; the testimony of musicians, listeners, critics, and other jazz lovers; and historical audio and video footage, Jazz emerges as a portrait of a music and an America reaching for the highest creative aspirations while battling over the basic freedoms of being.

Jazz won't just fill TV screens--Starbucks, a sponsor, will play jazz exclusively in its coffee bars all month; while General Motors, Burns' longtime underwriter, is sponsoring jazz events to benefit the United Negro College Fund. A handsome companion volume is already available (Knopf). And a massive reissue, including compilations and "Best Of" CDs, will be produced in cooperation with several jazz labels--all quite fitting for what Jazz's creators call "America's music."

PATRICK GILES: Why is jazz "America's music"?

KEN BURNS: It's the only true art form that Americans created. Jazz has emerged not only as a perfect reflection of who we are as a people, but as a world music as well. And all the popular forms we listen to today--rap and hip-hop, soul and R&B, rock 'n' roll and pop--owe their origin in some way, shape, or form, to jazz.

PG: You call jazz a "popular" art form, but the first definition I ever heard was that jazz was a form of classical music.

KB: Well, it's been called our American classical music only because it kind of has an enduring permanence in the way pop music doesn't. Something Louis Armstrong recorded in 1926 will tear the hair off your head today, just as it did back then, and that is the same effect that a Beethoven has, which is why I think people mistakenly call jazz America's classical music. In fact, it's the classic of our genius as Americans for improvisation. We're not gonna play what's on the page, we're gonna play what we feel like right now. This is our genius. That's why I did Jazz, you know: it's telling us about who we are, it's an opportunity to learn who we are.

PG: Jazz is your third--well, I call them your Homeric epics, these multi-part immersions into huge subjects.

KB: At first blush you go, Is this guy out of his mind? How is Baseball [1994] a sequel to The Civil War [1990], and how is Jazz a continuation of Baseball? They all have at their heart this improvisatory genius which is utterly American.

PG: My parents loved swing--my mother was a bobby-soxer at the Paramount, screaming over Frank Sinatra [in 1942].

KB: Oh, we've got unbelievable footage of that.

PG: Yeah, I kept freeze-framing those shots, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. I watched Jazz--the whole thing--over the weekend.

KB: You did? Are you OK?

PG: Fine, but if I hear any more syncopation I may start screaming.

KB: [laughs]

PG: Louis Armstrong--Pops--is Jazz's protean figure.

KB: I was at a press conference with some TV critics, and some of them were getting on me about the kind of categorical statements I was making about Louis Armstrong and his importance, and Dave Brubeck, who was also there, just looked at them in all his dignity and said, "Louis Armstrong is more important to this country than any president in the twentieth century." And he is--Armstrong opened doors in the Iron Curtain and kept people loving Americans when their governments were so anti-American, let alone being the single most important person in music in America in the twentieth century--I didn't say jazz--in music in the twentieth century.

PG: He literally mastered and made completely his own the entire range, not just of Western musical language, but human musical language.

KB: That's right. And eighty years ago!

PG: And as lightly, as easily, as you and I are talking right now.

KB: Exactly. I was just talking to a friend who was talking to Max Roach. He remembers Duke Ellington talking about Armstrong, and Ellington said, "Pops--untouched by human hands." That's so fabulous, 'cause that's exactly right.

PG: I lived in Harlem for seven years, and one day at the supermarket I was singing "Stompin' at the Savoy" to myself. The other customers asked me, "What's the Savoy?"

KB: Aye-yi-yi!

PG: The only customer in a Harlem supermarket who knows "Stompin' at the Savoy" is the only white guy!

KB: Well, there's a lot of work to do and, as you can see from The Civil War or Baseball, one of my major interests is race. I think it's the heart or the fault line of America. African-American history is not at the margins--it's at the center, the heart of American life. We need to be more mindful of it, and not just as white people, but black people as well. This is the beating heart of our country, this music. Jazz is not black music. It was born in the African-American community, but it's shared by everybody, and can be played by everybody. It's just that in the beginning you have to submit to masters who are African-American--and that, for a lot of Americans, is kind of a difficult pill to take.