Jazz: Rhythms of Freedom | Historical Documentary | Lucasfilm

Summary

This documentary explores the rich and transformative history of jazz, an innovative music genre born out of the African American experience. Emphasizing jazz's roots in the marginalized communities of America, it highlights how this music has served as a profound form of self-expression and liberation. Jazz's journey from New Orleans to global prominence encapsulates the merging of diverse influences and the freedom of improvisation. Key figures like Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong played pivotal roles in shaping jazz, which continues to symbolize freedom and creativity worldwide.

Highlights

• Jazz emerged as a voice for the disenfranchised, mixing elements from diverse musical styles 🎺
• Improvisation in jazz allows for spontaneous and expressive musical performances 🎼
• Notable jazz figures like Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong pioneered the genre's development 🎤
• Jazz's influence and evolution are visible through its various styles like swing, bebop, and modern jazz 🎷
• The genre's impact is global, spreading messages of freedom and creativity ✨

Key Takeaways

• Jazz symbolizes freedom and self-expression for marginalized communities 🎶
• Improvisation is at the heart of jazz, allowing musicians to express their emotions in real-time 🎷
• Key figures like Jelly Roll Morton blended various musical styles to forge jazz's unique sound 🎹
• Jazz evolved through different eras, reflecting social changes and embracing diverse cultural influences 🌎
• From New Orleans to global stages, jazz has become a universal language of music and liberation 🌍

Overview

Jazz traces its roots back to the marginalized communities of America, where it was born from a blend of musical influences across cultural borders. Initially seen in places ranging from brothels to churches, jazz was a sanctuary for those seeking to express freedom through music. This documentary illustrates how jazz served as a lifeline for the oppressed, merging African rhythms with other musical styles to create a new genre.

As jazz grew, pivotal figures like Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong emerged, bringing the genre to new heights. Morton, with his unique blend of African and Latin music, helped shape the voice of jazz. His contemporary, Armstrong, became synonymous with the genre itself, captivating audiences with his emotive trumpet playing and charismatic performances. These early icons set the stage for jazz's evolution and its enduring legacy.

The documentary also highlights jazz's journey through the 20th century and its global expansion. Jazz adapted to new environments and cultures, symbolizing more than just a musical style; it became a representation of social freedom and personal innovation. From New Orleans to Chicago, and eventually across the world, jazz's universal appeal embraced the rich diversity of human expression and the spirit of improvisation.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: The birth of Jazz Jazz originated in America, emerging from diverse environments such as cotton fields, cities, brothels, churches, opera houses, and night clubs. It is described as the music of the people – music that transcended social boundaries and was accessible across different social strata, including among marginalized communities. The musicians embraced the freedom that came with being on the fringes of society to innovate and shape the genre.
• 00:30 - 02:30: Expressions and improvisation The chapter explores the theme of expressiveness and improvisation in music, focusing on jazz as a key example. It portrays jazz as a medium born out of a desire for freedom and self-expression among marginalized people. The chapter emphasizes that jazz is a synthesis of musical history, harmony, rhythm, and melody, showcasing how these elements combine to enable individual expression and creativity.
• 02:30 - 05:30: Jazz during slavery and post-emancipation The chapter delves into the evolution of Jazz during slavery and its transformation post-emancipation. It emphasizes how Jazz musicians have historically taken various elements to create spontaneous statements that resonate with audiences. The music served as a medium of connection, fostering a love vibration and reinforcing the musicians' and communities' sense of purpose and belonging in the world.
• 05:30 - 09:30: Jazz's evolution in New Orleans Jazz has been an integral part of American culture for over a century, originating in New Orleans. It represents more than just a musical style or technique; it symbolizes liberation through music. The community takes pride in its history and actively seeks to share its cultural impact and evolution.
• 09:30 - 17:30: Jazz's unique features and improvisation This chapter delves into the unique aspects of jazz music, focusing particularly on the concept of improvisation. It begins with a historical context, explaining how enslaved Africans in America were stripped of their belongings and cultural ties, except for their music. It highlights how this music not only survived but evolved, suggesting the importance of personal expression and innovation within jazz, linking these aspects to its improvisational nature.
• 17:30 - 23:00: Billy Taylor's journey and influences The chapter titled "Billy Taylor's journey and influences" explores the historical context of music among enslaved Blacks, highlighting how music served as a vital means of communication and expression. It discusses the role of dance and song on slave ships and in the fields as a way to maintain physical fitness and improve labor conditions. Despite these origins, the enslaved population adapted the music into a unique form of communication, allowing them to convey messages and emotions when spoken language was restricted or prohibited.
• 23:00 - 28:00: The creative process in jazz The chapter, titled 'The creative process in jazz,' explores the transformative power of music, particularly in the context of those who had their native languages taken away in order to suppress communication and rebellion. In this environment, English was imposed, and people turned to music as a form of expression and defiance, leading to the creative innovation seen in jazz.
• 28:00 - 33:00: Jazz's development in Chicago The chapter explores the development of Jazz in Chicago, emphasizing the cultural and emotional roots of Jazz among African Americans. It highlights how field hollers and work songs were ways for Black communities to express sorrows and find strength. Jazz, with its basis in improvisation, gave each musician a unique voice, reflecting the adaptability and resilience of African American people.
• 33:00 - 38:30: Jazz as a musical revolution The chapter titled "Jazz as a musical revolution" discusses how jazz emerged as an innovative and beautiful transformation in music. It highlights jazz as a creative outgrowth which uniquely contributed to the evolution of musical expression.
• 38:30 - 44:30: Kahil El'Zabar's exploration of identity through jazz The chapter likely explores the implications of being constantly directed and monitored, possibly reflecting on themes of identity, autonomy, and self-expression through the lens of jazz, inspired by Kahil El'Zabar's experiences.
• 44:30 - 50:30: Jazz as a symbol of freedom The chapter explores jazz as a symbol of freedom, beginning with a reference to the song 'Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,' which captures the sorrow of being deprived of freedom. Once freed, African American slaves found new opportunities for their music, with New Orleans emerging as a significant hub by the late 19th Century.

Jazz: Rhythms of Freedom | Historical Documentary | Lucasfilm Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Jazz was born in America. In cotton fields and cities… in brothels and churches... in the opera house, and the night club… jazz was music of the people. This is music that could happen across the tracks or with disreputable people. But jazz musicians took the freedom allowed them by being marginalized
• 00:30 - 01:00 to create this amazing expressiveness to the music. Jazz began as part of a quest for freedom among those who were disenfranchised. From their struggle, it became a platform for self-expression. For me, it’s taking all of what I’ve learned about musical history, about harmony, about rhythm, about melody,
• 01:00 - 01:30 taking all of these elements and actually using them in the moment to create some statement. Sometimes you have that time when you know you’re just on and you connect with the people. It's a love vibration. It's something that says, "We are a part of people in the world, and we serve a purpose
• 01:30 - 02:00 And we have a pride for that. And we have a need to share it." For more than 100 years, jazz has been played throughout America. And everywhere it has been played, it has been more than just a style. It has been more than just a technique. It has been a way of liberation through music.
• 02:00 - 02:30 When Blacks were seized from Africa and enslaved in America, they lost almost everything. The family ties were left behind. Their social traditions were left behind. They brought almost nothing with them, no, no luggage whether physical or metaphorical. But the one thing they were allowed to keep was their music.
• 02:30 - 03:00 On the slave ships, Blacks were permitted to dance to stay physically fit. And in the fields, they were encouraged to sing to help them labor under harsh conditions. But the slaves took the music that was allowed them, and made it their own. It was a way of communicating from one person to another in another field working to say things to people when language was taken away.
• 03:00 - 03:30 And language was taken away for a very specific reason so that these people couldn’t get together and say, decide that they were not going to be slaves. English was thrown at them, and they had to learn to speak that. And they did what they could with what was available. And so that led to expressing themselves in music,
• 03:30 - 04:00 and it led to expressing themselves in many other ways that transcended language. Through field hollers and work songs, Blacks developed ways to share their sorrows, and find the strength to persevere. People had to adapt or die, and African American people adapted, and they didn’t die. Since their songs weren’t written down, the music was improvised and each person was given a voice.
• 04:00 - 04:30 So jazz was an outgrowth of that. It was one of the things to take music and do something that was... lovely. You just...you know...
• 04:30 - 05:00 Very sad, very, you know, ‘cause to have somebody tell you what to do all the time and- and be on your case
• 05:00 - 05:30 is a terrible thing. “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” is the title of that. And that’s the way, I guess, a lot of people felt. When the slaves were freed during the Civil War, they found new opportunities for their music to grow. By the late 19th Century, many African Americans had settled in New Orleans,
• 05:30 - 06:00 a city that had been founded by the French, and embraced immigrants from as far away as Spain, Germany, Ireland and the Caribbean. In New Orleans, different cultures not only lived side by side – they melted together, each adding its own flavor to the cultural mix. Before long, Blacks began blending their own music with the variety of styles around them.
• 06:00 - 06:30 The fusion they created would become known as jazz. Jazz draws upon the African American influence, which is predominant, but you also see these other influences coming on board. New Orleans had a great history of classical music, the number of opera houses and performance venues there were enormous. You also have that heavy Spanish influence with all the Latin music, both from the Spanish settlers and from the Caribbean.
• 06:30 - 07:00 You mix that in with the other people coming there for trade, for business, for leisure, and you had the unique opportunity to mix all these musical styles. Early jazz musicians reveled in the open atmosphere of New Orleans, where music was played in bar rooms and street corners, for everyone to hear. None loved it more than a young piano virtuoso named Jelly Roll Morton.
• 07:00 - 07:30 "They all mingled together as they wished to, and everyone was just like one big happy family. People from all over the country came there. Most times you couldn’t get in. This place would go on from four o’clock in the morning at a tremendous rate of speed, plenty money, drinks of all types, till maybe twelve, one, two, three o’clock in the daytime."
• 07:30 - 08:00 It was a great environment and the musicians there like Jelly Roll Morton, they soaked up the sounds around them. "Of course you got to have these little tinges of Spanish in it in order to play real good jazz." He heard the Latin music that was permeating the local environment. Jelly Roll was the individual that best forged all these elements together.
• 08:00 - 08:30 He was in the right environment that allowed him to take his own traditions, his own African American traditions, the sounds that he grew up with and then bring all these other American sounds into the mix. The mixing of styles in jazz produced music like nothing that had been heard before.
• 08:30 - 09:00 But fusion was only part of what made jazz unique. The early jazz masters – Morton, King Oliver, Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong – not only borrowed from other styles… they improvised their parts – creating new melodies spontaneously as they played. If you listen to some of the earliest jazz musicians, for example, King Oliver. He had a solo called “Dippermouth Blues,” which was very influential.
• 09:00 - 09:30 If you look at it notated, he’s only playing two or three notes over and over again. But when you listen to him, it’s tremendously vital. It’s tremendously exciting. Since the earliest days, jazz musicians have made improvisation the center of their art
• 09:30 - 10:00 and used it to convey their feelings directly to their audience. If you can be a great jazz musician, it’s not because your fingers are faster than everyone else’s. It’s because you can plunge yourself into the immediacy of the moment and draw all the energy, all the intensity and vitality of everything, everything you’ve learned, and put it to play in that moment.
• 10:00 - 10:30 And you have to control it. You have to do that so that it feels like something. And it makes no difference whether I feel it not. But I have to make you feel it. Billy Taylor was born in 1921 and grew up mesmerized by the early jazz masters.
• 10:30 - 11:00 I grew up in Washington D.C. he Howard Theater in Washington, D.C. was terrific, and each week a different band would come to Washington, D.C. and I’d get to hear 'em. And it was wonderful, because it only cost 35 cents, you know, and so even I could afford that. Surrounded by jazz as a child, Taylor decided he would one day add his own voice to the music.
• 11:00 - 11:30 I was fascinated. I had an uncle who played stride piano. You know, that was the way he played. And I said, “Oh, yeah, I want to do that." And I could hear the left hand and I could hear all of this stuff going on. And so I told my dad. I said, “I want to play like Uncle Bob.”
• 11:30 - 12:00 He said, “No, no, no, no. You have to study and learn how to play properly. Uncle Bob plays by ear and he’s, you know.” I said, “Yeah, but,” I want to play like that!" you know? Uncle Bob gave me my first Fats Waller and my first Art Tatum records. And that Tatum record just knocked me out. I mean I never, never heard anybody play piano like that.
• 12:00 - 12:30 Several friends of mine said when they first heard Art Tatum, said, “Who are those two guys?” I mean because he sounded literally like two people playing piano. But being able to play by ear, and to learn something immediately, just on hearing it… That fascinated me. I wanted to do that. It took me a long time to learn how to do it, but I managed it.
• 12:30 - 13:00 Taylor not only mastered playing jazz… he became a skilled composer, as well. I heard Dizzy Gillespie do something and I just liked the bass line.
• 13:00 - 13:30 Like the early jazz musicians he idolized, Taylor has incorporated a mixture of sounds – from European classical to Latin American – into his personal style. And he has shown that there is no single way to approach jazz music.
• 13:30 - 14:00 My name is Joe McPhee
• 14:00 - 14:30 and I like to think of myself as a musician. And someone once said to me, “Musician” -- “muse,” as in two words, “muse-ician,"
• 14:30 - 15:00 Someone who makes magic with the muses, and I kind of like that. As McPhee plays, he experiments to find the rights sounds to express what he’s feeling. He never knows where the process will lead him. We never say you start or I’ll start. We get on stage and we listen.
• 15:00 - 15:30 It begins with the first sound. That first sound sort of implies another possibility, and another, and another and another, and it’s sort of, I don’t know if you’d say it’s a kind of pyramid process or whatever, but it’s a building process. There are a lot of dead ends, but we must investigate every possibility. For example, you’re driving down the highway and you’re traveling south,
• 15:30 - 16:00 and you come across a big hole in the road. You can no longer travel south, but there are side roads that take you east or west or north. So that means at some point, you will be going absolutely in the opposite direction of where you want to go. You have to keep in mind where you want to be, but you’re going in the opposite direction. What do you discover? Other ways of solving that problem. Jazz is a very disrespectful art form.
• 16:00 - 16:30 Almost any other style of music that you learn, you’re told to imitate the people that went before you. In jazz, you have the exact opposite ethos. The jazz musician is told constantly to do something different. Musicians get on stage every night and improvise.
• 16:30 - 17:00 If you come to hear me play, you can love what I do or hate what I do, but you will not be indifferent to what I do. If you don’t like it, say to me why you don’t like it. I’ll talk to you about it. You may not agree with me and I may not agree with you, but at least we’ll be able to communicate with each other. And that’s all you can ask for.
• 17:00 - 17:30 Since jazz was first developed in New Orleans, countless musicians have tried to enliven it with their own ways of playing. But as early jazz progressed, musicians found that the city, itself, was becoming an obstacle to their art. Despite its multicultural history, New Orleans was embedded deep in the American South, where Jim Crow segregation ensured that Blacks were treated as second-class citizens.
• 17:30 - 18:00 By the early 1920s, many New Orleans artists including Louis Armstrong , Sydney Bechet and Jelly Roll Morton, joined a migration of Blacks to Chicago, a city where Blacks had greater freedom to live, and to express themselves. You could hardly find a place in America better suited to jazz music in the 1920s than Chicago.
• 18:00 - 18:30 There were opportunities to earn a livelihood, there were places to perform. But above all there was this atmosphere of tolerance and freedom that was a great inspiration to artistry. Here's this street culture. This real, new, fresh, like, I'm no longer sharecropping. I'm in a big city, and I'm wearing cool clothes like Jelly Roll Morton And I'm seeing pretty women sashaying.
• 18:30 - 19:00 And I'm going from church, and then I'm coming from the club, and then I'm hanging out in the streets all day, and there's music 24-7, saying that life is moving. Jazz spread quickly in Chicago, where countless nightclubs emerged to meet the growing public demand. And Chicago offered jazz musicians another opportunity:
• 19:00 - 19:30 not just to play their music, but to record it. By the mid-twenties, Jazz records were selling throughout the country and millions of Americans – both white and black – had a chance to hear jazz for the first time. I don’t know what measure you would use to measure the rhythmic intensity or the excitement of jazz
• 19:30 - 20:00 but however you do it, it was off the charts. It was like a cook who had discovered new spices. All of a sudden you’ve been eating this bland food all your life and now someone puts a dish in front of you with all these exciting flavors that you’ve never had before. Well, jazz music was like that. It was serving up this musical dish to the American mainstream that they’d never heard before and they liked it. Jazz no longer belonged to one group or city.
• 20:00 - 20:30 It had become America’s music. As America’s music, it flourished from the early to the mid-20th century, and branched into a variety of different styles. In the 30s, it was called “swing.” In the 40s, “bebop.”
• 20:30 - 21:00 In the 50s, “modern jazz.” In the 1960s, jazz musicians sought to connect their music to the waves of social change happening around them.
• 21:00 - 21:30 As they had done since the earliest days, jazz musicians asserted their vision of jazz as a means of personal expression and a tool for freedom. In the development of jazz we have a style called freedom music And the freedom on the surface seems to be freedom from certain musical constraints.
• 21:30 - 22:00 But freedom is a loaded word. Particularly in an art form like jazz made by African Americans, the great underclass of our society, freedom always means more than the notes that people are playing. Freedom is a state of mind, freedom is a state of society, and these things all get mixed together in the freedom music of the 1960s.
• 22:00 - 22:30 1968, when Martin Luther King was shot, I went with some friends. I was in the front of all these people marching for Martin Luther King. My first opportunity to record my own music gave me a platform
• 22:30 - 23:00 and I thought if I’m ever gonna have a voice, if I’m ever gonna have an opportunity to make any kind of statement, this is gonna be it, and that’s what I chose to do.
• 23:00 - 23:30 My name is Kahil El'Zabar and I'm a musician and composer. And it's been my life's work since I was a child. I was always around music.
• 23:30 - 24:00 One of the fun things I used to do with my father was scat. Since I was a kid. You know, sitting in the car waiting for my mom someplace, because we were always waiting for my mom. He would take me through tunes. I was what they called LD -- learning disability student. So when he would do [scat singing]
• 24:00 - 24:30 Scrapple the Apple by Bird, would oriented me to a certain kind of attention. And it became really a part of my way of expressing things. El’Zabar grew up in Chicago in the 1950s and 60s,
• 24:30 - 25:00 where he heard everything from bebop to free jazz. In 1969 he joined a growing movement of African Americans who were exploring their identities through their history and culture. He traveled to Ghana, Africa, to study music in the continent where jazz had its earliest roots. Jazz could not have existed without African music.
• 25:00 - 25:30 When you listen to African music, you’re really struck by the spontaneity. Also you really hear this great rhythmic intensity. In Ghana, El’Zabar felt that rhythm all around him – not just in music, but in everyday life. Rhythm permeates every aspect of existence. There’s nothing in life without vibration, right?
• 25:30 - 26:00 If it’s alive, it vibrates. If it vibrates, it has a pulse and if it has a pulse, there is a mathematical sequence of movement to that pulse, which is rhythm. When I was in Ghana - when I went to school with University of Ghana -
• 26:00 - 26:30 I learned about the Yoruba language and, like, you know, if I said in Yoruba, “Africa nihi lami” and if I played [playing beats], the rhythm is the syntax of what I’m speaking. “Africa nihi lami.” Same thing. So then I said well how can I translate the syntax of language that I grew up with in that same way? How can I say, “What’s happening?”
• 26:30 - 27:00 After three years in Ghana, El’Zabar decided to take what he had learned and bring it back to America. My "Asinihini" which was, like the “big teacher," the "Asinihini" say, “You do good, man.” He said, “When you speak Yoruba you do good. But it’s not your land. It’s not your language. Your ancestors, yes. But you come from there. Can you sing a blues?”
• 27:00 - 27:30 I said, “Yeah. I can sing the blues.” He said, “That’s your language. That’s your language.” So I said, How, can I translate what I’ve learned of the Antumpan drum from Ghana, How can I relate that to my trap drums? How can I place that in writing with a piano? How can I synthesize a sense of Africanness which for me became, my word is “Afroslick.”
• 27:30 - 28:00 Taking from that ancient, putting a contemporary spin of contemporary life, and allowing myself to grow.
• 28:00 - 28:30 Since its birth in America, jazz has grown, and spread across the world. As it has spread, it has become a symbol of freedom: freedom against oppressive governments… the freedom of an individual to sing, or dance, or to have a voice. I’m proud of the fact that jazz has literally gone around the world
• 28:30 - 29:00 and made different people of the people that it has touched. There are so many people who come to us now and who have got the message, the message about freedom to express yourself, the message that you can do something, which everybody else feels, “Well I don’t think you can do that.” And that’s the same lesson that Africans got when they came to this country
• 29:00 - 29:30 and it’s been spread in a way that I think no one else has been able to do to that extent. I wrote a song called “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free” and at the time that I wrote it, I didn’t know that. And I feel I know that now.