THE HISTORY OF JAZZ – 11 DVDs (Jazz Ambassadors + Ken Burns: Jazz) Plus Bonus “Support Live Music” Sticker

Description

This amazing American music set includes your Complimentary “SUPPORT LIVE MUSIC” Sticker plus nearly 20 hours of jazz history and entertainment on 11 DVDs in total: Hugo Berkeley‘s THE JAZZ AMBASSADORS plus KEN BURNS: JAZZ. Ken Burns: Jazz celebrates America’s greatest original art form. This 10 part series, six years in the making, follows the growth and development of jazz music from the gritty streets of New Orleans to the Lincoln Gardens on Chicago’s south side, 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. 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. In The Jazz Ambassadors, the Cold War and Civil Rights movement collide in a remarkable story of music, diplomacy, and race. In 1955, as the Soviet Union’s pervasive propaganda about the U.S. and American racism spread globally, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. convinced President Eisenhower that jazz was the best way to intervene in the Cold War cultural conflict. For the next decade, America’s most influential jazz artists (including Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Dave Brubeck) traveled the globe to perform as cultural ambassadors. But the unrest back home forced them to face a painful moral dilemma: How could they promote the image of a tolerant America abroad when the country still practiced Jim Crow segregation? Told through striking archival film footage, photos, and radio clips, with iconic performances throughout, the documentary reveals how the State Department unwittingly gave the Civil Rights movement a major voice on the world stage just when it was needed most. As seen on public television. Color. Widescreen. Subtitled in English (SDH).