The Music Documentary on Martin Luther King Day

The Music Documentary on Martin Luther King Day

The influence of American culture on silent film music was wide reaching; conversely, so was the influence of silent film music on American culture. Audiences were exposed to existing classical music, some for the first time, as well as popular and newly composed works. New instruments were developed, an accepted musical practice was conceived that is still evident in today’s film music, the US Copyright laws were refined, and an entirely new genre of American music was born. These innovations made the music documentary possible.

There are as many different types of music documentaries as there are styles of music, but one of the first instances of music actually being combined with “film” in the United States took place in 1894. New York sheet music publishers Edward B. Marks and Joe Stern hired electrician George H. Thomas and various performers to promote sales of their song “The Little Lost Child.” Thomas photographed people acting out the song; the photographic images were then printed on glass slides and painted in color by hand. Musicians played and sang the song live in the theater while the slides were projected on a screen by means of a magic lantern. This would become a popular form of entertainment known as the “illustrated song,” the first step toward music video. Thanks to illustrated song performances, “The Little Lost Child” became a nationwide hit, spawning a huge industry. At one time, as many as 10,000 small theaters across the United States featured illustrated songs. For music publishers, it was a gold mine. Marks, a former button salesman, and Stern, a one-time necktie hawker, became Tin Pan Alley titans.

Some of the earliest American music flicks, so-called “promotional shorts,” featured the jazz stars of that time. Among the jazz world’s most flamboyant luminaries was Cab Calloway. The Hi-De-Ho Man’s signature tune “Minnie the Moocher” served as the soundtrack to Max Fleischer’s 1932 Betty Boop cartoon episode of the same name. Calloway also recorded “St. James Infirmary Blues” and “The Old Man of the Mountain,” which were likewise featured in Betty Boop animated shorts.

Through rotoscoping, an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement frame-by-frame, Calloway not only lent his singing voice to these cartoons, but his dance steps as well. He appeared in a series of Paramount “shorties” in the 1930s, where he can be seen performing a gliding backstep dance move – a precursor to Michael Jackson’s “moonwalk.” The orchestras of Calloway and Duke Ellington appeared on film more than any other group of the era.

According to Richard Brody, Shirley Clarke’s 1985 documentary, Ornette: Made in America reveals much about the seminal jazz innovator. In this amazing music documentary Clarke joins an impressionistic portrait of the musician with an informative overview of his life, work, and ideas. The documentary also poses painful questions about a mid-career artist whose restless curiosity is yoked to the glory and burden of a public persona—questions that apply as well to Clarke and her methods.

The film’s fractured, collage-like composition is anchored by Coleman’s 1984 visit to his home town of Fort Worth, where he received official tributes and performed his orchestral work with the local symphony and his own band. Dramatized reconstructions of his youth, filmed performances from the sixties onward, and discussions with him and other musicians and associates (including William Burroughs and Brion Gysin) mesh with Clarke’s diverse array of video manipulations and her flamboyant, rapid-fire editing, which break through the reportorial evidence to evoke the visions and fantasies from which Coleman’s music arises. Clarke relates Coleman’s grandly transformative multimedia projects (including one involving satellite transmissions) to her own; his troubled effort to rehabilitate a Lower East Side building highlights the free-flowing connection of art and life. Although not explicitly eco in their themes, these music "documentaries" showcase an urban environment to which musicians respond in multiple ways.