WHO KILLED JAZZ - Award Winning Short Film - Director Ben Makinen - A Must-Watch For Music Lovers!

Live music died because of amplified loud volume... musicians now playing to technology rather than people... forcing people to hear instead of having to listen. Only fools allow their ears to be blasted.

Jazz went into coma after Trane passed away and truly died after Miles died. Right now, jazz is a museum of jazz albums. Jazz schools train new jazz teachers but not authentic performers.

I'm glad this film was made and I appreciate the work involved, but to me the title promises something that the film doesn't deliver. I suppose it is one thing to be able to describe a problem, but much harder to offer a solution to it. In the end, I'm not sure what I got out of watching it. I will still listen to jazz and go to live gigs, but must of what I hear is recordings at home.

Some jazz is just terrible. Some jazz is just amazing. But jazz is NOT dead. (Getting paid playing it? I have no comment on that)

Well done, Ben! Sad but true.

To respond to the statement..........NOBODY killed Jazz because Jazz is NOT dead!! Jazz is NOT dead !!

However, there are many people who claim to be Lovers of Jazz, but in actuality are Jazz Lovers in Name Only. They do not support live Jazz events.

Regardless, Jazz is NOT dead!!!

Wow, reading the comments is almost as distressing as the film. The lack of empathy for the gigging musician from many of the people commenting is horrible. And if you hate jazz, WTF are you doing making nasty comments on a film about jazz? SMH. People... 🙄

Stop moaning its largely your own fault

Damn. Yeah, that's about the size of it. Excellent work, and too depressing. What a world. BTW, I once sat in with some of those Denver jazz guys when I was in college, and they gave me a hard time. They let me know I needed more time in the woodshed. It was a good lesson.

Jazz will live forever.

It's truly tragic. And a nobody like taylor swift is a billionaire ..... it feels like justice is missing in many places these days.

I'm a jazz musician in UK and same exploitation exists here.....
The pure love of this amazing art form allows this to happen...it takes a few years to be a dentist....but much more to be a pro level jazz person....say £100k pa dentist ...£10k jazz musician, probably less...but better for our well being mentally and physically ....

this film is true for all of live music. Everything is canned now, and music means so little to the public. It's completely disposable. Taken for granted. There are only the current pop superstars and the 'oldies' superstars. Barely any middle. Maybe some club dates musicians eck out a living ...with students.
Sort of like the way the rest of the culture is going, with the disappearance of the middle class.

cool film. thanks

This is total nonsense and does not answer the question or rather even explore the odd, inaccurate statement: "Who Killed Jazz." Whoever put this together knows nothing about music. -- Kirk Reynolds, Musicologist, The Orchestra: Jazz Origins and Transformations. (Scribners, NYC). You might want to consider first the definition of jazz and its transformations. Lame thing here. An award? LOL. Guess everyone gets an award. According to this it's because payment to musicians reduced to $50 or $100, spoken nine times in this total waste of time hodgepodge of nothing.

The $50 gig is not solely the province of jazz. ALL live music performances in clubs & bars are horrifically undervalued & underpaid.

"Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny" (F. Zappa)

Read Downbeat magazine and read Ted Gioia's book, The History of Jazz, stupid .

Like in any other business, the jazz musician must understand how to negotiate a salary. If you are playing to play rather than working to work, you will accept any kind of payment.

I was going to comment but then there is so much useless bullshit in this documentary that only reinforces the stereotype of jazz people being kooks and out of touch with regular people

And they give millions of dollars to p Diddy and Beyonce Jay z... for garbage that most people are into..
And people aren't stupid?

Great work Ben! Touches on all the frustrations of trying to provide sound for live bands as well. It took nearly a ton of PA system to do a club or hotel gig back in the day. Hard for any band to come up with the extra $100-150 for a sound guy. As noted at the end of the film, so often, the music is a secondary concern of the people in the audience. Those gigs were hard to get through. Little wonder younger audiences see no value in live performance. The music in their lives has cost them little. They did not need to hunt it down in a record store. It came to them through the web, as a file. Even a CD was tactile, giving the music on it substance. Hard to imagine what music of today will stand the test of time.

After having listened to the feedback/responses, have any of your views/thoughts/conclusions changed?

If one were to ask you "Please tell us, to the best of your ability, where might your biases and blindspots be?"...could you answer?

In fairness, blindspots are called "blindspots" for a reason, and often it take a loyal dissenter to help point them out. But it seems that a fair amount of people (though not an overwhelming amount) have made some fair criticisms. What percentage of those criticisms have you taken into serious consideration?

Wonderfully anarchic!

Editing makes this unwatchable unfortunately.

And it’s literature, painting, etc. we need to return to pre-modernism. Or better, rather than return to a pre- modernism, move to a post post modernism… we have to answer the question: what would get folks to want shut down their tech interfaces and return to live real arts.

This is fuckin tight. Thanks for making it

I want a governor like John Hickenlooper

Jazz committed suicide.....

Who killed Jazz: white people. Y’all talentless group of Neanderthals fuck everything up.

I have a couple of Charlie Hunter CD's. Awesome player.

great film and sad too I am a jazz musician and play other music to get work

Nice

At biscuit and blues a party came in and were loud people were trying to sush them. Finally the host she kicked them out. Whew. Any venue there are always young women talking loud, saying nobody shuts me up, the new fad, and one can only respond, who raised you? Wolves. It is this new girl thang to be a disruptive obnoxious person like a male that would be punched or tossed out of a bar. Only the grils think there should be now consequence and this is how one claims equality. SMH.

Mexico city has one jazz club and one blues club, 8 million people. During covid club owners discovered that women in little black dresses will line up to get into a club with disco and pay the same cover as they will a live music club. As long as the attendee is the center of attention, that is all that matters. The band is secondary to the event.

If you are not cool with the music you aren't cool with yourself... Miles

Does the video have a point? Seems just random comments that may contain the word jazz.

Buttcheeks.

Interesting and sad.

It's America, if it can't sell it and commodify something, it is on its own. America is an anti-art, anti-intellectual country.

If you can’t put butts in seats, how do you expect to be paid well? Go to a European jazz club. There will an appreciative and enthusiastic audience. Why? I dunno. An uneducated guess-they are taught music appreciation in school. Most probably from a young age. Here, we decimate music education. String programs are all but gone in the states I’ve lived. Music budgets are pathetic. Art classes , no budget for supplies or just plain eliminated. You have to start them young.
My guess is that those bebop clubs were closing in the early 50s as the previous generation was starting families and the next generation wanted the newest, shiniest thing. Rock n roll. We had a population boom after WWII. Then it dipped until the boomers had kids, but we’re on a steady decline. Can’t put butts in seats, when there ain’t as many butts. Then you’re competing with handheld dopamine dispensers. Good luck fighting that fight.

Music industry and Record houses with people who manage streams of music that is more money providing. Frank Zappa said it well in one interview. People are getting dumbed down to not think....

Not bad for a 17yo lad

IMHO Jazz killed itself. Jazz was the pop music of the 20's, 30's, and 40',s. At some point Jazz got arrogant and forgot its roots. Jazz forgot how to dance. Jazz was above the hoi polloi and so the hoi polloi left it behind.

I loved reading the comments debating if jazz died (or at least became unpopular) when it became undanceable. I think folks who actually dance should try and figure out why it became undanceable. I know there are a few different reasons but I'm what yall think it is. I thought the comment about the best jazz musicians are musicians who lean more to heavy metal. It's true that some musicians who love heavy metal are very good jazz drummers and I'm sure some heavy metal guitarists play jazz, but they seem to be in the minority. Everyone has their opinions though.

Thank you.

Jazz is a spirit. It can’t be killed. Energy never dies it just changes form. Jazz has grandchildren, Hip-Hop, Funk, GO-GO. it’s still very much a foundation of Black American Music.

Who said jazz is dead?😮