Long Live Jazz
Who killed Jazz? Nobody. Jazz is alive and kicking. But that is the provocative title of Ben Makinen’s 22-minute documentary which deals with the questions and controversy around the business of jazz as opposed to the artistic genre itself. Makinen is no newbie to jazz, having previously produced the two-hour Jazztown, a freeform narrative with performances and deep conversations with a number of artists that get to the heart of the genre.
It’s no news that the music industry has undergone drastic changes with the arrival of the digital age. Piracy, streaming, low royalty fees, and a number of other issues have turned the business upside down. Live performances, which used to be regarded and strategically treated as a support to the main source of revenues – i.e. albums and CDs sales – have now become the main livelihood. Bands used to tour largely to promote new albums and sell records, now they tour to sell tickets.
Makinen freely opens up a number of topics that range from the idea of exploitation of jazz artists while other parties benefit from their, whether musicians have lost the connection with their listeners, the emotional motivation for playing jazz in the first place and the question of are jazz musicians their own worst enemies?
Throughout the film we hear from over twenty musicians, including well known names like Dianne Reeves, trumpeter Ron Miles and guitarist Charlie Hunter, but extends to a number of local artists who have not gained notoriety outside their hometowns.
The conversations are as candid and improvised as the music these musicians produce. There’s some humorous talk about those that play jazz are those wealthy enough to afford it, some worry about the original roots being stripped out of the music, others complain about jazz schools, and others claim the volume of performances had declined from six nights a week to a few performances per month on a lucky month.
Jazz is perhaps one of the most passionate art forms in the sense that musicians devote a tremendous amount of work, time and energy with the financial expectation being very secondary to the artistic fulfillment. The mere talent and complexity of the music also limits the audience, similarly to classical music. You couldn’t get Miles Davis at the height of his career or even the Three Tenors to fill up Levi’s Stadium the way Taylor Swift can. Ironically, when it comes to music, with few exceptions, there is a reverse correlation between effort/talent and financial gain. And this is true to most of entertainment including other music genres, film, theater, dance, etc. There’s a certain ease to the embracement of pop culture that turns “easy” artists into lucrative global figures, while the extreme talent remains limited to cultural niches.
The film, intelligently, does not seek to find answers to these questions, but merely to explore the issues and circumstances surrounding the world of jazz today, its musicians, its clubs and its audiences. It presents a picturesque and thought provoking story of where jazz is today.