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I Think The Problem With A Lot Of The Fusion Music Is That Its Extremely Predictable, Its A Rock Rhythm And The Solos All Play The Same Stuff And They Play It Over And Over Again And Theres A Certain Musical Virtuosity Involved In It.

-Ken Burns

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I Think The Problem

Ken Burns

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I Think The Problem With A Lot Of The Fusion Music Is That Its Extremely Predictable, Its A Rock Rhythm And The Solos All Play The Same Stuff And They Play It Over And Over Again And Theres A Certain Musical Virtuosity Involved In It.

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A Jazz Beat Is A Dynamic Changing Rhythm.

I Have Come To The Realization That History Is Not A Fixed Thing, A Collection Of Precise Dates, Facts And Events (even Cogent Commencement Quotes) That Add Up To A Quantifiable, Certain, Confidently Known, Truth. It Is A Mysterious And Malleable Thing.

Louis Armstrong Is Quite Simply The Most Important Person In American Music. He Is To 20th Century Music (i Did Not Say Jazz) What Einstein Is To Physics.

The Only Art Form That Americans Have Created That's Recognized Around The World Is Jazz Music Born In A Community That Had The Peculiar Experience Of Being Unfree In A Free Land.

You Can Learn As Much About The History From Reading About The Present As You Can Vice Versa, That Is Learning About The Present Through History, Which Is What I Do For A Living.

Jazz Is A Very Accurate, Curiously Accurate Accompaniment To 20th Century America.

To Say That An Artist Sells Out Means That An Artist Is Making A Conscious Choice To Compromise His Music, To To Weaken His Music For The Sake Of Commercial Gain.

Nothing In Our Daily Life Offers More Of The Comfort Of Continuity, The Generational Connection Of Belonging To A Vast And Complicated American Family, The Powerful Sense Of Home, The Freedom From Time's Constraints, And The Great Gift Of Accumulated Memory Than Does Our National Pastime.

I Think The Problem With A Lot Of The Fusion Music Is That Its Extremely Predictable, Its A Rock Rhythm And The Solos All Play The Same Stuff And They Play It Over And Over Again And Theres A Certain Musical Virtuosity Involved In It.

The Reason Why You Do History, And Particularly Why You Do War, Is That You Want To Make Sure That In The Next War, Some Lessons Were Learned. There's A Saying: "history Doesn't Repeat Itself, But It Does Rhyme." Or Ecclesiastes: "what Has Been Will Be Again. What Has Been Done Will Be Done Again." Human Nature Always Superimposes Itself - Its Strength And Its Frailty Over The Rush Of Chaos Of Ongoing Events - And We Can Perceive Patterns And Themes And Motifs.

The Stories From 1975 On Are Not Finished And There Is No Resolve. I Could Spend 50 Hours On The Last 25 Years Of Jazz And Still Not Do It Justice.

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I Treat The Photograph As A Work Of Great Complexity In Which You Can Find Drama. Add To That A Careful Composition Of Landscapes, Live Photography, The Right Music And Interviews With People, And It Becomes A Style.

I Can Understand Why Some Of These Drummers And Bass Players Become Cult Figures With All Of Their Equipment And The Incredible Amount Of Technique They Have. But There's Very Little That I Think Satisfies You Intellectually Or Emotionally.

History Isn't Really About The Past - Settling Old Scores. It's About Defining The Present And Who We Are.

In A Sense I've Made The Same Film Over And Over Again. In All Of Them I've Asked, 'who Are We As Americans?

Filmmaking Is Essentially About Entertainment, But It's Amazing To Realize That It Has This Other Muscle That Could Actually Help. Do You Know What I Mean? People Permit Entertainment To Wash Over Them, But Every Once And A While, Entertainment - And This Is Entertaining - Also Galvanizes Something Else And That Would Be A Really Good Thing To Have Happen In This Case.

When You Are Editing, The Final Master Is Aristotle And His Poetics. You Might Have A Terrific Episode, But If People Are Falling Out Because There Are Just Too Many Elements In It, You Have To Begin To Get Rid Of Things.

I Subscribe To William Faulkner's' View That History Is Not Just About What We Were Before But Who We Are Now.

People Tend To Forget That The Word "history" Contains The Word "story".

The Way I Work, The Interview Never Becomes Larger Than The Person Being Interviewed.

I Read Cover To Cover Every Jazz Publication That I Could And In The New York Times, Every Single Day Reading Their Jazz Reviews Even Though I Didn't Put Them In The Films. I Wanted To Know What Is Going On.

I Think My Expectations For Myself Are Much More Severe And Much More Direct. You Can't Work On A Film For Six Years Without Being Your Own Toughest Critic. So You Can't Really Be Distracted By The Expectations Based On Your Previous Performance.

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The End Of The Day

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I Began To Feel That The Drama Of The Truth That Is In The Moment And In The Past Is Richer And More Interesting Than The Drama Of Hollywood Movies. So I Began Looking At Documentary Films.

Write: Write Letters. Keep Journals. Besides Your Children, There Is No Surer Way Of Achieving Immortality.

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In Most Films Music Is Brought In At The End, After The Picture Is More Or Less Locked, To Amplify The Emotions The Filmmaker Wants You To Feel.

I Think We Continually Need To Understand How Important An Event The War Was - How Defining, How Central To Who We Are. Everything That Came Before It Led Up To It, And Everything Of Importance To This Country - At Least Up To 1940 - Was A Consequence Of It. Even Now There's An Echo Of The War, However Faint, In Almost Everyone's Life.

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Rest Of Your Life

History's Just Been Made For Sale To An Inside Deal.

I'm A Filmmaker. I'm An Artist. I've Chosen To Work In History The Way Someone Might Choose To Work In Still Lifes Or Landscapes.

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Do Something That Will Last And Be Beautiful. It Doesn't Have To Be A Bridge-or A Symphony Or Book Or A Business. It Could Be The Look In The Eye Of A Child You Raise Or A Simple Garden You Tend. Do Something That Will Last And Be Beautiful.

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