The Jazz Singer

In The Jungle a young man named Jurgis Rudkus moves to the United States landing in Chicago, with his family looking for a better life then what they had in Lithuania. They

Throughout history sound has been used to help convey a story. As early as the 1900’s, without today’s technology, movies would often be accompanied by a soundtrack played on a piano or record players. In 1927 The Jazz singer was released, a warner bros movie that featured music and dialog on the actual filmstrip. This film is

The Harlem Renaissance was an African American cultural movement specifically in creative arts such as music and literature. Jazz represented the flavor and zest of African American culture in the 1920s-1940s. Billie Holiday had a great impact on the Harlem Renaissance because she was one of the most influential jazz singers of all time. She performed with other great jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Teddy Wilson, Jo Jones, and Henry Allen. Her career as a jazz singer was an incredible and thriving one, however, it was shortened because of her battle of substance abuse. Despite the drug use and the loss of her mother, the only thing she could turn to was her music. Billie Holiday's legacy will always live on when the discussion of the Harlem Renaissance is present.

“JAZZ” is a documentary by Ken Burns released 2001 that focuses on the creation and development of jazz, America’s “greatest cultural achievement.” The first episodes entitled, “Gumbo, Beginnings to 1917” and “The Gift (1917-1924), explain the early growth of jazz as it originates in New Orleans and its expands to Chicago and New York during the Jazz Age. In assessing the first two episodes of Ken Burns' 2001 documentary, "JAZZ," this essay will explore the history of jazz, the music's racial implications, and it's impact on society. In doing so, attention will also be given to the structure of the documentary, and the effectiveness of documentary film in retelling the past.

Jazz to me is one of the inherent expressions of Negro Life in America: the eternal tom-tom beating in the Negro soul—the tom-tom of revolt against weariness in a white world, a world of subway trains, and work, work, work; the tom-tom of joy and laughter, and pain swallowed in a smile. Yet the Philadelphia clubwoman… turns up her nose at jazz and all its manifestations—likewise almost anything else distinctly racial…She wants the artist to flatter her, to make the white world believe that all Negroes are as smug as near white in smug as she wants to be. But, to my mind, it is the duty of the younger Negro artist …to change through the hidden force of his art that old whispering “I want to be white,” hidden in the aspirations of his people, to “Why should I want to be white? I am Negro—and beautiful.”

Have you ever made a hard decision? That’s what Mel has to do. He has to decide between has friends band garage or a career in a jazz band. While Mel may enjoy the time and band with his friends but he should do the Jazz band. Mel should do the Jazz band because we should always do what we can to get better at what we love. Even if that means we lose something else.

From its inception, Jazz has applied both innovative approaches in different degrees and boundless configuration. And has continually amplified, progress, and modify music through various distinctive episodes of growth. So, an all-encompassing denotation of jazz is likely vain. Additionally, jazz as a music whose prime attribute was “improvisation,” for example, revealed to be too regulated and chiefly false. Meanwhile composition, adaptation, and ensembles have also been imperative constituent of Jazz (for most of its backstory). Furthermore, “syncopation” and “swing,” often viewed as important and distinctive to jazz, are certainly lacking the genuineness of it, whether of the 1920s (or of later decades). However, the prolonged perception that swing could not transpire without syncopation was utterly refuted when trumpeter Louis Armstrong often produced vast swing while playing repeated, and unsyncopated quarter notes (Armstrong, L., Fitzgerald, E., & Middleton, V. (1988). Satchmo. Gong.)

When Mama passed away during Jamesetta’s preteen years, her whole world completely flipped, and she lost touch with the safe lifestyle Mama had built for her. Being some what of a local celebrity, singers who would come to L.A. began to enter her life, and in a nut shell, she grew up much quicker than her time. Dorothy, still coming in and out of her life, stopped causing her fear, but curiosity. The more notice Jamesetta got for her voice, and the more people from the industry that involved themselves in her life, the more curious she got for this lifestyle that Dorothy had, which was wildly similar to that of those in the industry. “…she lead this mysterious nightlife that, to me, seemed fearless-going out to dangerous places with dangerous people. Dangers and fears and excitement all ran together in my mind” (p.14). She suddenly would want to stay with her mother on her wild nights, and do things like her and observe the behavior. She tried to please her mother in that way, though she never could. Her mother never bat an eyelash in her direction.

During the early 1900’s, a new style of music began to take shape in the colorful city of New Orleans. People from all over the world came to exchange stories, conversation, and music. Although it is a very hard genre of music to define, it is said that Jazz is the combination of European and African music that was brought in via the ports. With mostly an African American population, the musicians shared their music in Storyville - a cultural melting pot, and began to spread the “New Orleans Sound”. They contributed to what would soon be known as Jazz in 1917. The spontaneous nature of Jazz’s syncopation and sound makes it a very humanistic style of music and makes every performance original. Every day we improvise, whether it is in conversation or spur of the moment decisions. These truly unique elements caused Jazz to become a symbol of America, and changed music forever.

The end of the 1920s was known for the ending of the silent film in Hollywood. With the advancement of sound technology, it has transformed the way we view films in today’s world. It all began with a film called The Jazz Singer, directed by Alan Crosland, starring Al Jolson, Warner Oland, and May McAvoy. The film is about a little boy named Jakie, whose father is a Jewish cantor, and he defied his father by not wanting to follow the family tradition of cantors. He wanted to be a performer, specifically, a jazz singer. One day, he was discovered by his neighbor Moisha and thus he got beat up and kicked out of the house. Jakie vowed to never return home. A decade later, Jackie is a performer with the help of his lover Mary with a new identity by the name of Jack Robin who wears a black face when on stage. One night, his father fell ill and was asked to sing at the synagogue, however, it fell on the same day as his opening show on Broadway. Jakie had to make a tough decision choosing between his family or his career.

At the mention jazz music, that person will first think of is likely to be a great figure with a clown image, nicknamed Satchmo. The man was Louis Armstrong. He is a husky singer, often with a trumpet in his hand. He played dramatic works of simple structure in Orleans jazz style and with the accompaniment of Dick jazz music. Each of the books on jazz music will mention his name. Louis Armstrong was to jazz music what Bach is to classical music, Presley is to rock music (Berrett 230). This essay will have an introduction of the king of jazz music -- Louis Armstrong and his great influence on jazz history.

The film depicts the lives of those who live on a city block in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York where Sal’s Famous Pizzeria is located. Racial and ethnic hatred is shown through the characters who frequent the Italian restaurant. Sal’s son, Pino, wants to move the Pizzeria into their own neighborhood away

The main character, a young, German man named Peter Muller, was very traumatized by what the Nazi's and Gestapo (the terrorist political police of the Nazi regime founded by Hermann Göring, whose purpose was to persecute all political opponents of the Nazi regime) did to his father. Over the course of the movie, Peter went through a change; he saw his father in a new light, and realized what really mattered in the world around him. Peter's father was a violinist and professor at the university. He spoke out against the expulsion of the Jewish professors and the entire Nazi movement. Because of this, one night, in the middle of dinner, he was taken away by the Gestapo. He was brought back home

     The music called Jazz was born sometime around 1895 in New Orleans. It combined elements of Ragtime, marching band music and Blues. What made Jazz such a different perspective of traditional music was its act of improvising. There was a widespread use of improvisation often by more than one player at a time. Songwriters would write the music down on a piece of paper, and then the Jazz musicians would try their best to play the music. Usually in a Jazz piece, musicians would use the song as a starting point to improvise around. Jazz musicians would play a familiar song to the audience, and by the time they were done with the piece they would stir up a totally different feeling away from the

Musically, this film helped portray just how talented Ray Charles was, with the help of trained classical pianist and gifted singer, actor Jamie Foxx. Jamie Foxx was able to portray Ray’s cool style of song while representing the historical time when fusion of swing, bop, R&B, gospel, and rock were developed in the jazz scene.The film Ray provides an unflinching portrait of Ray Charles’ musical genius while overcoming drug addiction and transforming into a beloved performer. A few songs that I recognized in this film are “I Got a Women”, “Georgia on My Mind”, and “Hit the Road Jack”. All in all, Jamie Foxx played such an inspiring role capturing both aspects of music and real life struggles that Ray Charles is known for. Since Ray Charles was a popular and known jazz artist in the 1940’s - 1960’s, he would have been around for both the bebop and post bop eras, which was also around the same time as the Civil Right Movement. The film captured the realization that race was an issue during Ray Charles’s life and that his innovation of fusing gospel style of music was a revitalized sense of black pride. Overall, Jamie Foxx’s performance was nothing of amazing and Taylor Hackford’s film was a great representation to Ray