Jazz, Hip Hop Etc.

[Ralph Dumain]

At 06:13 PM 8/6/97 -0400, James Schmidt wrote:
>Buhler also is a work on
>a paper on a very odd film: A SONG IS BORN -- a 1940s musical with Danny
>Kaye playing the leader of a group of German scholars who are trying to
>understand jazz (Benny Goodman -- Adorno's particular demon -- plays one of
>the Germans). If you squint while watching it, Danny Kaye and the gang
>start to look like Horkheimer et al. It's a rather wierd film.

I saw this film!  On TV within the past year or two.  I was absolutely
fascinated.  Amazed that such a film was actually made in America at that time.
Of course it was terribly limited by the conventions of the day, but whoever
wrote this must have been consciously progressive, about taking the music
seriously and connecting to the real life conditions and the American
democratic spirit that created the music.  In 1949-50 C.L.R. James wrote
that Americans strove to integrate all of life, intellect, aesthetics, and
the rest, and that this was more important than "culture".  This film, in
trying to promote the forging of a relationship and integration between
thought, culture, and life, fascinates the hell out of me.