Watch Jazz | Full Documentary
The Savoy Ballroom
Exuberant dancing at the Savoy Ballroom.
Clip
3m 53s
Clip
The Savoy Ballroom
3m 53s
Exuberant dancing at the Savoy Ballroom.
Full Length
Gumbo
81m 48s
JAZZ begins in New Orleans, nineteenth century America's most cosmopolitan city, where the sound of marching bands, Italian opera, Caribbean rhythms, and minstrel shows fills the streets with a richly diverse musical culture. Here, in the 1890s, African-American musicians create a new music out of these ingredients by mixing in ragtime syncopations and the soulful feeling of the blues.
Full Length
The Gift
108m 52s
As the Roaring Twenties accelerate, Paul Whiteman, a white bandleader, sells millions of records playing a sweet, symphonic jazz. Louis Armstrong comes to New York, adding his improvisational brilliance to the band's new sound - and soon Armstrong is showing the whole world how to swing.
Full Length
Our Language
106m 40s
As the stock market continues to soar, jazz is everywhere in America, and now, for the first time soloists and singers take center stage, transforming the music with their distinctive voices and the unique stories they have to tell.
Full Length
The True Welcome
118m 57s
In 1929, America enters a decade of economic desperation, as the Stock Market collapses and the Great Depression begins. Factories fall silent, farms fall into decay, and a quarter of the nation's workforce is jobless. In these dark times, jazz is called upon to lift the spirits of a frightened country, and finds itself poised for a decade of explosive growth.
Full Length
Swing: Pure Pleasure
88m 38s
As the Great Depression drags on, jazz comes as close as it has ever come to being America's popular music
Full Length
Swing: The Velocity of Celebration
99m 45s
As the 1930's come to a close, Swing-mania is still going strong, but some fans are saying success has made the music too predictable. Their ears are tuned to a new sound - pulsing, stomping, suffused with the blues.
Full Length
Dedicated to Chaos
113m 9s
When America enters World War II, jazz is part of the arsenal.
Full Length
Risk
118m 35s
The postwar years bring America to a level of prosperity unimaginable a decade before, but the Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation makes these anxious years as well. In jazz, this underlying tension will be reflected in the broken rhythms and dissonant melodies of bebop, and in the troubled life of bebop's biggest star, Charlie Parker.
Full Length
The Adventure
114m 32s
In the late 1950s, America's postwar prosperity continues, but beneath the surface run currents of change. Families are moving to the suburbs, watching television has become the national pastime, and baby boomers have begun coming of age.
Full Length
A Masterpiece by Midnight
108m 32s
During the Sixties, jazz is in trouble. Critics divide the music into "schools" - Dixieland, swing, bebop, hard bop, modal, free, avant-garde. But most young people are listening to rock 'n' roll.
- Prev
- 1
- 2
- 3
- Next
About the Film
Filmmaker Ken Burns tells the story of jazz — the quintessential American art form. The 10-part series follows the growth and development of jazz music from the gritty streets of New Orleans to the Lincoln Gardens on Chicago's south side, where Louis Armstrong first won fame, from Prohibition-era speakeasies to the wide-open clubs of Kansas City, from the elegant Roseland Ballroom in Times Square, where only whites were allowed to dance, to the more egalitarian Savoy Ballroom in Harlem, where people of all colors mingled.
Six years in the making, Jazz features 75 interviews, more than 500 pieces of music, 2,400 still photographs and more than 2,000 archival film clips — many rare and never before seen. Third-person voices are provided by Samuel L. Jackson, Delroy Lindo, Derek Jacobi and Harry Connick Jr., among others.
Read A Note from Ken Burns
Explore Related Films
Empire of the Air [1991]
Examine the lives of three men who shared the primary responsibility for this life-changing invention.
Thomas Hart Benton [1988]
The bittersweet story of a great American artist who became emblematic of the price all artists must pay.
Mark Twain [2002]
"I am not an American, I am the American." The remarkable story of Samuel Clemens' adventurous life as a writer.
Frank Lloyd Wright [1998]
The man whose buildings and ideas changed the way we live, work and see the world around us.
The Shakers [1984]
Though they were celibate, the "Shakers" constitute the most enduring religious experiment in American history.
See All Films