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The Marlowsphere (Blog #157)

When it comes to documentaries where the subject is jazz, the American catalogue is full of viewing choices, so much so you come away with the impression that jazz is only performed in the United States and if it is performed elsewhere on the planet, well, how good could it be? If it was created and performed on a par with American jazz composers, arrangers, and musicians, well, then, certainly documentaries would be a lot more present.

Syurpriz! That’s Russian for “Surprise!” According to a recently released feature-length  documentary (114 minutes) produced in Russia, jazz has been performed in Russia (more surprise) for 100 years!

The documentary—“Jazz 100 Russia”—was the brainchild of renowned Russian tenor saxophonist Igor Butman (he’s also one of the characters in the documentary as well as one of the producers, along with Yulia Hmelevskaya).

It was written by Russia’s leading jazz journalism Cyril Moshkow. The director is Alexander Bryntsev. The documentary’s major sponsor is the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.

The documentary calls itself “groundbreaking” and it is that. It’s the first documentary to encapsulate the 100 years of jazz in Russia, starting with the introduction of jazz by (syupriz) an innovative dancer, Valentin Parnakh, who brought the jazz sound and aesthetic to Russia from his visits to Paris in the early 1920s.

Second, the six-part feature is a cornucopia of archival footage that no doubt took years of specific and serendipitous research.

Third, along with the archival footage, the soundtrack is wall-to-wall jazz of various stripes paralleling the evolution of jazz in the United States, from “trad jazz” to “free jazz” to today’s contemporary styles. This, too, must have required painstaking research.

Fourth, the documentary does not shy away from dealing with the political lefts and rights in Russia since the 1917 Russian Revolution, although the references are subtle and non-critical.

The 100-year span of Russian jazz history brought together in 114 minutes is in itself a work of art: gorgeously shot and edited so well the viewer does not notice the content juxtapositions. It tells a story of not just the jazz players, but also the social and cultural backdrop in which this democratic form of music through improvisation ─ and therefore individual freedom of expression ─ as survived and grown in a country with a long history of adherence to central authority.

Speaking of improvisation, one of the best definitions of jazz is articulated by Evgeny Pobozhiy, the young winner of the 2019 Herbie Hancock Jazz Guitar Competition. He says:

[Jazz] is the most perfect musical form that humans have created. Jazz culture
has absorbed the best achievements of humanity: Western traditions and oriental
ethnic traditions, and African, of course. It is based on improvisation, that is, on
spontaneous music-making, and improvisation is impossible without deep knowledge
and understanding. A jazz musician has always been something like a symbiosis of a
creator and a scientist, both involved in a certain spiritual practice.

Well stated. Just like the documentary.

The documentary will become available outside Russia after it has been shown on Russian television. Click here to see the trailer.

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D.
Producer/Director/Writer
“Jazz in China” Winner of the 2022 Free Speech Film Festival

Eugene Marlow, MBA, Ph.D., © 2023

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“Jazz In China: The Documentary,” chronicles the 100-year story of how jazz—a democratic form of music through improvisation—exists and thrives in China—a country with a long tradition of adherence to central authority.

“Jazz In China” is a documentary produced, directed, and written by Eugene Marlow, Ph.D. based on his 2018 book Jazz in China: From Dance Hall Music to Individual Freedom of Expression (University Press of Mississippi).

The 60-minute award-winning documentary reveals the significant influence of African-American jazz musicians with leading indigenous jazz musicians, sinologists, historians, and jazz club patrons in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and archival and contemporary performance footage.

“Jazz In China” was the winner of the 2022 American Insight “Free Speech Film Festival,” and received the “Award of Excellence” from the Depth of Field International Film Festival.

“Jazz In China” will  be an “official event” of the UNESCO-sponsored International Jazz Day, on April 30, 2023.

Many thanks to those who made this event possible:
Curator Leslie Arlette Boyce
Brooklyn Heights Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library
NYFA  “Jazz In China” is a sponsored project of the New York Foundation for the Arts

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Eugene Marlow’s feature length documentary “Jazz in China” is the winner of the 2022 American Insight sponsored “Free Speech Film Festival.”

American INSIGHT’s Free Speech Film Festival celebrates the passionate innovations of independent filmmakers, and champions the ideas, perspectives and voices that prove vital to the future of Free Speech, Human Rights, and the Rule of Law around the world.

American INSIGHT’s Free Speech Film Festival is a goodwill, grassroots, sustainable program that unites judges, students, scholars, educators and the general public in conversations about the past, present and future of Free Speech.

The mission of the Free Speech Film Festival is to promote Free Speech, not war.

According to Margaret Chew Barringer, American Insight Founder & Chairman, “When we first saw the submission from Director Eugene Marlow we didn’t know this very democratic form of music could exist (and THRIVE) in such a place. This astonishment was just one of the many reasons ‘Jazz in China’ is the 2022 Free Speech Award-winning Film.”

She added: “Over several weeks of judging approximately 100 entries from 17 countries, ‘Jazz in China’ never fell out of first place.”

“Most people don’t know that jazz even exists in China,” noted Bob Craig, popular host for WRTI, Philadelphia’s jazz and classical music radio station. “The film chronicles the 100-year story of how this very democratic form of music improvisation exists and thrives in a country with a long tradition of adherence to central authority.”

Click the image to see the “Jazz in China” trailer.

The Free Speech Film Festival Award Ceremony was moderated by American INSIGHT Board member, Karen Curry, former NBC and CNN Bureau Chief. She was joined onstage by Bob Craig, longtime WRTI Jazz host,  Dr. Eugene Marlow, the director of the 2022 Free Speech Award winner and Jiefei Yuan, documentary Associate Director.

American INSIGHT’s annual Free Speech Film Festival Award Ceremony was held Saturday, November 19^th, 2022 in Philadelphia, where Dr. Marlow was awarded the symbolic Free Speech Liberty Bell and $1,000 honorarium by Ms. Curry.
 
Topics submitted to the American INSIGHT Free Speech Film Festival in 2022 included censorship, resistance, inequality, courage, change, and hope. Independent filmmakers from 58 countries around the world have entered their films as a response to the subject of Free Speech: You Define It!

The six 2022 Official Selection films are:

•  Jazz in China directed by Dr. Eugene Marlow
• My Grandmother Is an Egg directed by Wu-Ching Chang
• Common Grounds? directed by Raed Truett Gilliam
• Chinese Cancan – Lulu, a Chinese Woman directed by Coralie Van Rietschote
• Strength Among Us directed by Taha Ovaci
• Urania Leilus directed by Andrew Serban

Eugene Marlow, Ph.D., teaches courses in media and culture at Baruch College (City University of New York, since 1988). “Jazz in China” is his latest documentary project based on his 2018 acclaimed book. Previously, his documentary short “Zikkaron Kristallnacht: A Family Story” was an “official selection” at 17 domestic and international film festivals and was the recipient of the John Culkin Award from the Media Ecology Association. Dr. Marlow has earned awards for video programming excellence from numerous film festival competitions.

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Marlowsphere (Blog #156)

Music serves many functions in society and can be found in almost every corner of everyday life. One such function is “protest.” Protest songs give musical voice to issues dealing with racism, war, civil rights, and women’s rights, among others.

Among the most famous protest songs in western culture is “Strange Fruit” recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. It is based on a poem inspired by the lynching of two young African-Americans in 1930 Marion, Indiana. They were accused of rape and murder. The poem was written by Abel Meeropol (1903-1986), a white Jew, teacher, poet and songwriter, who published under the name Lewis Allan.

It is not usual, however, to hear of protest songs and singers in eastern cultures, such as China, but they exist. The most prominent is Cui Jian, a Beijing-based singer-songwriter (also trumpeter and guitarist) who is recognized as the “father of rock” in China. He has been jailed by the Chinese government from time to time for composing and performing songs critical of the Communist Party.

Critical protest of the Chinese Communist Party goes beyond issues of governance. Among the issues are violence against women, a global problem in fact. Estimates published by the World Health Organization indicate that globally about 1 in 3 (30%) of women worldwide have been subjected to either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. Most of this violence is intimate partner violence.

Chinese-born, New York City-based contemporary composer Anruo Cheng’s response to this issue in China is her 8:27 minute protest composition “She Says | 她说.”

“She Says” was inspired by several reports and significant incidents in China:

1. Every 7.4 seconds, a woman in China faces domestic violence, according to the All-China Women’s Federation, the country’s largest women’s organization. For example, after enduring years of attacks, Shaanxi native Yang Xi killed her husband. She was originally sentenced to death, but a higher court commuted the sentence to 12 years in jail for killing him.
2. A Xuzhou woman was chained to a wall, tortured, and gave birth to eight children for her “husband.” The incident was revealed through video interviews by social media in the winter of 2021 but immediately covered up by mainstream media in China. Some people were arrested while investigating the case. Unfortunately, the chained woman’s voice is not allowed to be heard anymore.
3. In June 2022, four women were assaulted and brutally punched by a group of men in a late-night Tangshan (China) restaurant. After the surveillance footage of the incident was leaked online, the victims, as well as their families and friends remained silent.

Cheng adds: “In this work, you will hear heavy percussive sounds every 7.4 seconds throughout the piece, representing the domestic violence happening to Chinese women. I also use the Chinese ancient folk tune Jasmine Flower (originally praising women’s purity and nobility) as a metaphor for the victims and twisted facts people are facing. Many other sound objects manipulated by electronic techniques are also inspired by these incidents, like the sounds of chains, metallic percussive sounds, and sounds of broken glass bottles.”

There are two kinds of broad musical categories: absolute music and program music. The former is music that stands alone without any requisite explanation. This category of music can be enjoyed and appreciated on its own merit. The latter category is the reverse. One of the more famous examples of “program music” is Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” where various instruments take on the characteristics, musically speaking, of the “characters” in the story. The music, though, is accompanied by a spoken narrative.

The repetition of “She Says” in a female voice hints at the subject of Cheng’s piece, and the repeat of hard sounds every 7.4 seconds also gives an indication of what the piece means and what its purpose is. But you need the external explanation to reveal the real power of the composition. Could this piece standalone without any further explication? Certainly. Its sonic elements are compelling on their own. But when you understand the inspiration of “She Says” the power of Cheng’s composition expands exponentially.

Click here to listen to “She Says| 她说” on Sound Cloud.

For more about Anruo Cheng, go to www.anruocheng.com

Eugene Marlow, MBA, Ph.D., © 2022

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