Classic pop or rock music stirs similar testimonials, but there s something remarkable, even alarming, about the way jazz inspires loyalties and memories. Sid s Ahead jelled as one of the great private moments of their lives, summaries of existence and gratitude. Jazz provides a moral about human creativity. Its impure beginnings declare that excellence comes from a wildness in the human spirit, where shadowy insights are wedded to discipline to make art. Obsessions with purity slide into violence.
Fascist societies have plenty of order and official happy slogans.
Jazz anticipated world music trends by showing the genius that emerges when cultures mingle. Pop music luminaries of recent times discovered that insight by coming into their best work, a new-found spiritual wholeness, when they got in touch with musical sources from the other side of the world. Englishman Peter Gabriel discovered African melody. Paul Simon and David Byrne both mingled African and South American sounds with New York City. Burns beholds jazz the way he did baseball and the Civil War a slow, reverential retelling of a saga over many hours.