RE: RARA-AVIS: Re: jazz & hard-boiled

Spurlock, Duane (Dspurlock@paulschultz.com)
Wed, 19 Nov 1997 10:40:26 -0500 >E=etienne@singnet.com.sg wrote:
>
>Besides the moods created by the Jazz music itself, and its historical roots
>fed by gangsterism mainly due to the prohibition years (but finally, is this
>not true for all of the American society of the early XXth century as
>well?), another factor for its selection in some films is that Jazz was
>always a music of contestation, like the HB/Noir films were themselves a
>kind of provocation against the mainstream of society and its hypocrisy,and
>against corruption of officials.
>If you add to it the racist background of these years, it was probably
>something felt as a provovation as well for a White musician to play with
>Black jazz players...
>So, besides the evident expressionism of Jazz music that serves well HB
>movies, there was IMO also a kind of symbiosis of two popular arts forms,
>both being "untuned" to the then mainstream views of the American society,
>at least until the early sixties. This was certainly felt by most of the
>film directors using Jazz.

To extend some of what you've pointed out here, look to some of
"Blaxploitation" films of the early 1970s. Here directors brought
together the hardboiled/crime subject matter with the contemporary
descendant of jazz, funk music. So from more mainstream films like
"Cotten Comes to Harlem" and "Shaft" to a movie like "Super Fly", you
can see the Outsider characters and music combined using an accepted
genre--hardboiled crime (which, while an accepted entertainment vehicle,
is still an "outsider" subculture)--in an accepted entertainment
medium--motion pictures.

Wheeling on too much caffeine--Duane
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