Monday, March 20, 2006

Jazz by Ken Burns

During the weekend, I watched the first five episodes of Ken Burns' Jazz. He directed the sprawling documentary for PBS back in 2000. I caught part of it a few years ago, and I knew at the time that I had to watch all of it at some point.

Well, that point has arrived. In a word, the work is awesome. It covers history, politics, race relations and, of course, music. If you are a music fan, you need to get your hands on this masterpiece and watch all of it. I was riveted.

It's available on DVD on Amazon for $180 or so, but you can also rent it from Blockbuster. Actually, I borrowed it from the Mercyhurst Library, so it is available in various places if you poke around for it.

It will change the way you see the world. It certainly has changed the way I view modern music.

That's the tip for the day.

DocDDD

3 comments:

Jenson said...

Sounds like it's worth checking out :)

Dr. Downing said...

It really is special. The entire show is 19 hours, so it involves 10 VHS tapes (or several DVDs), and a lot of time invested.

But it is so much fun to watch that I can't wait until the second five tapes arrive. It's made such am impression on me that I might have to write a separate entry on some of the highlights.

Ralph said...

Right. I've seen parts of it definitely intriguing - that's the word of the day for me (see above post). Have you ever seen Burns' Civil War piece.