Word: blanding
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...America with his improvisational expression of black joy and freedom, while the rhythm section, with its repetition of one melody over and over again, represents black life as it is--restrained, helpless, and stagnant--"how things really are." What injuries the credibility of The Cry of Jazz is Bland's not-so-logical deduction that because whites haven't suffered they plainly can't understand, and therefore can't create, play or even listen correctly to jazz compositions...
...Bland's forum for showcasing this message considerably damages any support he could bring to bear for his tenuous argument. He places three black musicians spouting out the "jazz for blacks only" decree in a highly unrealistic setting of a small white cocktail party of three naive white racists and a fourth white woman who is "trying so hard to understand" the obfuscating arguments of the musicians. And Bland's cause isn't helped by the "acting" so reminiscent of one of those Steve Cochran - George Nader beat generation movies that reeked of one-star performances...
...while these idiotic white characters (one professed to see no difference between jazz and rock 'n' roll) try to shoot holes through Bland's thesis with questions directed only at his strongest contentions--such as whether "Negroes" have actually suffered--they never press the musicians to explain why some lower class oppressed white or other minorities aren't producing jazz as prolifically as blacks...
Nevertheless Bland's most effective moments come when he makes a mockery of the white "attempts" at jazz. At first he cuts away from the genteel party to street scenes of lower class blacks accompanied by some appropriately blue jazz tunes. Then he wickedly splices to a serene snow scene with an unperturbed upper crust executive getting off a suburban local; next, he cuts even deeper to a white woman nonchalantly trimming the white locks of her baby poodle. All this, to a background of pristine Brubeckian pop, a cruel contrast to the rest of the film's dynamic, gutsy...
Aside from the black-white jazz juxtaposition, Bland gives little support for his murder indictment of white jazzmen. He fails to deal with the then up-and-coming black musicians, particularly John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy, who when the movie was made were far from their deathbeds. And more importantly, he precludes any sort of white imitations arising, a viewpoint which the plangent sounds of John Klemmer's tenor sax go far to dispute...