Hacker Cinema
Jazz
2001 · TV series · documentary · 120 min episodes · 1 season
Jazz is a ten part series that explores the evolution – and the genius – of America’s greatest original art form, focusing on the extraordinary men and women who could do something remarkable – create art on the spot. Jazz celebrates their profoundly enduring, endlessly varied, and infinitely alluring music in the context of the complicated country that gave birth to and influenced it, and was in turn transformed by it.
6 positive2 mixedfrom 8 commenters
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9 comments on Hacker News
The most common strong opinion is that it basically ends in the 1960s. Jazz is 100 years old. There are more years of jazz after where the documentary ends than in the years covered by it.
It is a good watch but that's what peeves jazz nerds.
One of the best "courses" for it is to understand how it developed. The miniseries Jazz by Ken Burns from 2000 is excellent and offers an extremely good intro to jazz. Don't take it as gospel though; some people have very strong opinions on it.
There's a Ken Burns documentary series on the history of jazz. It is not the best, but it is a very good into for understanding the history and development of jazz. For me, I used to dislike any vocal jazz, other than scat. This Ken Burns Jazz series illuminated me about vocals in jazz and now I appreciate them much more, and enjoy many. The series also gave me a context to understand and investigate deeper on my own.
Ken Burns Jazz Series has essentially an entire episode on the concept of swing. Definitely worth watching.
A great jumping in spot would be to watch Ken Burn's Jazz and Country Music Documentaries. Two other shorter documentaries that I can recommend is "The Wrecking Crew" (2015) and "It Might Get Loud" (2009)
Listening to music isn't gonna do you a lot of good unless you have context. For example, The Beatles and Beach Boys influenced each other. Rubber Soul led to Pet Sounds which led to Sgt. Pepper which led to Smile.
Another consideration is that some of the real influencers aren't well known or popular, and some of them were not the singers but the music writers, producers, and musicians.
I watch episodes 5-8 of Jazz like once a year
Perhaps it would also be worth mentioning Ken Burns and his documentaries.
They're absolutely worth watching and gives BBC a run for its money.
Perhaps start with The West and then move on to Civil War. My personal favorite was perhaps the one on Jazz, made in 2001.
Also, check out the TV series History of Jazz by Ken Burns:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_(TV_series)
(seems to be available on youtube)
Here's a thought. Do you know your Meyers-Briggs type? It sounds like you might be more of a "thinker" than a "feeler".
If you're more of a "thinker", start at the beginning, learning about the roots of blues and ragtime, what life was like in New Orleans in 1900.. Then work your way forward, learning about how jazz evolved into more modern forms. It's a really fascinating story.
You could check out the Ken Burns documentary. I also really recommend this "coffee table" book, which really covers everything (in case you don't want to watch 20 hours of documentary about something you don't really care much about): http://www.amazon.com/Jazz-John-Fordham/dp/0751300500/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336613394&sr=8-1
This approach will work for art, literature.. really anything..