In 1961, in a little village in the middle of the Guinean tropical forest, a music band is born. This band will soon become one of the biggest orchestras of modern Africa. It is Bembeya Jazz. This orchestra, symbolizing the Guinean revolution of Ségou Touré, managed to rock the whole African continent with their music. Forty years later, we go back to its roots. Besides the difficulties, the “Bembeya mystery” is still alive: the legend continues!
Évocation à travers des séquences musicales magiques de l'importance du jazz dans la musique américaine des années 30. Entre spectacle de music-hall, animation et comédie musicale classique.
Eddie Crane, a young composer, is struggling with a tune he has just written. When his girlfriend, Dixie Donegan, provides words almost by accident, the song is published and is a great success.
Will Handy grandit à Memphis avec son père (pasteur) et sa tante Hagar. Son père entend, bien qu'il utilise ses dons musicaux uniquement à des fins religieuses à l'église, mais Will n'arrive pas à se séparer de la musique de rue de son époque. Après avoir écrit une première chanson, Gogo, une chanteuse, arrive à le convaincre de l'accompagner. Will est étranglé par la culture forte de son père et ses chansons de blues. Enfin la famille se réunit quand Gogo les fait venir à New York pour voir Will chanter une de ses chansons au milieu d'un orchestre symphonique.
Mild-mannered Professor Hobart Frisbee (Danny Kaye) and his fellow academics, among them Professor Magenbruch (Benny Goodman), are writing a musical encyclopedia. In the process, they discover that there is some new popular music that is called jazz, swing, boogie woogie or rebop, introduced to them by two window washers Buck and Bubbles. The professors become entangled in the problems of nightclub singer Honey Swanson (Virginia Mayo). She needs a place to hide out from the police, who want to question her about her gangster boyfriend Tony Crow (Steve Cochran). She invites herself into their sheltered household, over Frisbee's objections. While there, she introduces them to the latest in jazz, with which they are unfamiliar, giving the film an excuse to feature many of the best musicians of the era. The songs they play include "A Song Is Born", "Daddy-O", "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You", "Flying Home", and "Redskin Rumba".
The Cry of Jazz is set in Chicago at the meeting of a jazz appreciation club of musicians and intellectuals, both Black and White. It is broken up into seven parts. Parts one, three, five, and seven center around conversations between the jazz club members. Parts two, four, and six are done in a documentary style and utilize footage of life in Chicago as well as of Sun Ra’s band performing the music. Alex, the film’s main character, serves as narrator during these sections. Although the film is nominally about jazz, jazz is utilized primaily as a metaphor through which to understand the African American experience.
“Jazz on a Summer’s Day” est l’un des tout premiers concerts filmés de l’histoire du cinéma. Louis Armstrong, Mahalia Jackson, Chuck Berry, Chico Hamilton… Les plus grandes légendes du jazz défilent sous le soleil de Newport et nous livrent une performance unique. Entre deux concerts, Bert Stern filme l’effervescence qui anime cette ville, à la manière d’une parenthèse enchantée.
Set in the early 1900s in the fictional Catfish Row section of Charleston, South Carolina, which serves as home to a black fishing community, the story focuses on the titular characters, crippled beggar Porgy, who travels about in a goat-drawn cart, and the drug-addicted Bess, who lives with stevedore Crown, the local bully. While high on cocaine supplied by Sportin' Life, Crown kills Robbins after the latter vanquishes him in a craps game; Bess urges Crown to flee. Sportin' Life suggests she accompany him to New York City, an offer Bess declines. She seeks refuge with her neighbors, all of whom refuse to help her. Porgy finally agrees to let her stay with him.