Geoffrey C. Ward & Ken Burns
Pimlico, 2001
Paperback. 510pp
£30.00

This book accompanied the mammoth American television series shown on the BBC in 2001.

Born in the bustling streets, smoky honky tonks and jumping dance halls of the turn-of-the-century New Orleans, jazz is America's indigenous musical form. Evolving from the polyphony of ragtime and the soulfulness of blues, it is a music born out of a million American negotiations: between having and not having; between happy and sad, country and city; between black and white and men and women; between the Old Africa and the Old Europe - which could only have happened in an entirely New World.

The history of jazz is inextricably bound up with the story of race in America. A curious and unusually objective witness to the twentieth century, Jazz tells the story of race and race relations and prejudice, minstrelsy and John Crow, lynchings and civil rights. And embodied in the music, in its riveting personalities and soaring artistic achievement, is a message of hope and transcendence - and, above all, the American promise of freedom.

But Jazz is much more. It is the story of two world wars and a devastating depression, the soundtrack that helped American through the worst of times. Jazz is about sex, the way men and women talk to each other and conduct the complicated rituals of courtship. It is about drugs and the terrible cost of addiction and the high price of creativity. It is about the growth and explosion of radio and the soul of great American cities - New Orleans, where the music was born, and Chicago, Kansas City and New York, where it grew up. It is about immigration and assimilation and feeling dispossessed - and the music that came to the rescue. It is about movement and dance, entertainment and the sacred communion between artist and audience. It is about solitude and loneliness, suffering and celebration - and tapping your feet.

Above all, Jazz is the story of dozens of extraordinary musicians. In this powerful narrative, Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns bring to life the remarkable men and women whose legacies have left a lasting imprint on our culture. In words and photographs - some never before published - we meet Jelly Roll Morton, Willie 'the Lion' Smith, Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbeck, Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Charles Mingus, Dave Brubeck, and many more. Essays by Winton Marsalis, Dan Morgenstern, Gerald Earley, Stanley Crouch and Gary Giddins put the evolution of jazz in its cultural context.

Magnificently illustrated and marvellously readable, Jazz, like the music itself, is an exploration and celebration of the American experience.

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