In honor of Jazz Appreciation Month, the Madison Public Library is offering all kinds of great events this spring. “InDIGenous,” a collaboration with the Greater Madison Jazz Consortium, brings jazz musicians into the library’s public spaces for four free Thursday night concerts. Those less inclined to require a cash bar can check out “Jazz in the Library.” The program extends April’s foci across a series of lectures and multimedia engagements including a screening of Jazz in Exile courtesy of Madison’s own Chuck France on Tues, Apr 7 at Goodman South Library.
A retired videographer and staff member at Wisconsin Public Television, France still calls Madison home. France recently spent some of his downtime restoring his 1982 documentary with a brand new, color-corrected digital transfer. The film itself has aged gracefully, a charmingly earnest combination of sit-down interviews and live performances from some of the half-century’s most notable jazz musicians. The simple construction is because Jazz in Exile is primed for a single purpose — to document the flight of American jazz from America to Europe beginning in the 1960s — and France stays out of the way of both the music and his interview subjects. His camera is content to linger on piano virtuoso Mal Waldron as he reminisces about backing up Billie Holliday or working with John Coltrane. “Flumpet” pioneer and Jazztet workhorse Art Farmer chain smokes and recalls what feels like an eternal under-appreciation of black music by white America.
Waldron and Farmer’s respective reverence and criticisms crystallize Jazz in Exile’s duality, at once appreciating then-contemporaries like pianist Randy Weston and saxophonist Dexter Gordon (a surprise gig performance of Gordon’s signature take on “Red Top” is a highlight) while scorning audiences and promoters for taking for granted our most intrinsically American art form. Race relations played (and still play) a role in this intersection and the film’s cadre of gigsters dance around America’s reluctant progressiveness in so many words. That’s where Europe’s appeal comes in, according to the musicians themselves. Lip service is given to Berlin’s notoriously brutal crowds as the exception, with either France directing or cutting around hipster anti-nationalism or sour grapes from his subjects.
Years after musicians’ departures to Germany and France, Jazz in Exile represents the enthusiasm its performers didn’t find stateside — and with a stylistic commitment to boot. Wide angle lenses push groundwork camera angles on the ghettos of Harlem to bolder dimensions, and France intersperses an opening rendition of Gordon’s “Gingerbread Boy” with collages of black and white photographs. The musicians flash against the screen in rhythm, like an invisible painter against a constantly shifting canvas. Reverence by replication, France has given his musicians the appreciation they were searching for.
- Chuck France will present Jazz in Exile FREE at the Goodman South Library on Tues Apr 7 with a Q&A to follow. Additional screenings will follow on Mon, Apr 20 at the Deerfield Public Library and Wed, May 20 at the Fitchburg Public Library. All presentations are at 6:30p.