In The Spirit Of Black History Month Celebration

History can be boring for some, but Ken Burns's brilliance helps illuminate the dark, past times of the history of the United States of America. In what he terms the American Trilogy, Ken Burns deals with moments and historic themes that most Americans--Americans with a different heritage- can relate to. He started out with "The Civil War," produced his amazing, smashing series on Baseball. And now, he serves us with a 10-episode Jazz, thus completing his trilogy with great fanfare.

What is clear in all of Burns's series is that he tends to celebrate people in their moments of glory and failure. One group of people that is sure to get some attention in Jazz are the African-American and Caucasian pioneers, Jazz musicians who became trailblazers for a new kind of music that will become a revolution in the collective minds of not only Americans but also of people from all over the world.

What I like with Ken Burns's approach to the American experience--history-- is that his details and the expert choice of music caused me to think deeply and go back in times. It's a great time to relive and be part of what it was like to be living in the 13 colonies. More importantly, his "Civil War" series showed not only the resilience and the courage of the Blacks of this country, but also their determination to change the course of history and the institutions that enslaved them, exploited them, and treated them like heads of cattle. It is my opinion that anybody watching the trilogy should think of it as a unit. In fact, each series complements each other.

Now that Ken Burns brings us Jazz, we should see it as a celebration of our ability to delve into our collective past to redress the wrongs that were done to various ethnic groups. Just like Ken Burns puts it, Jazz not only celebrates the music and its creators, it's about wars, the Depression, sex, drugs, cities and race, race and race. In most of his series, Ken enthusiastically shares our common history with us. This is what draws me into The Civil War, Baseball and now Jazz.

Even though a lot of African-American artists rose to prominence with Jazz, there were also a lot of white Jazz artists. Once again, Jazz represents the true images of America, a diverse group of people. After all, everybody would like to live in this America that is based on meritocracy instead on the color of one's skin or the family one was born into. Unfortunately, for far too long, that's what some of the episodes of Jazz will show. Jazz showed the talent of black as well as white musicians. They had a strong affinity to the new American musical art form. And entertain they did entertain the public.

Jazz is about joy and improvisation. It's not about written music as in the case of European musical forms. Ken Burns just gave us a little bit of this interesting musical form, it is up to us to delve deeper into it. Besides Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday, there are a lot of other names that are worthy of recognition. The music is out there. we need to embrace it as our own. By the way, many foreigners or nationals of other countries have already embraced it and made it theirs too.

If you have paid attention to the beginning of this series on PBS, you still have time to watch some of the remaining episodes. It's a trilogy you should have in your video library for future generations.