Bolden, an in Depth Review

Big budget films about jazz don’t come along very often. I feel a special sense of responsibility in writing about this film, as I believe that readers of Syncopated Times have a considerable emotional and intellectual investment in how it turned out-especially in how Buddy Bolden’s music is re-created by Wynton Marsalis.Let me note at the top that there are several things that complicate the job of evaluating Marsalis’ music. First is that Marsalis has tremendous musical technique and a very characteristic sound and it’s hard not to hear that sound and that technique in what he plays.Second, the fidelity of the music is high-as one would expect in any media created in 2019. However, in listening to early jazz, we often hear music that has not been recorded optimally and which can have a fair amount of surface noise. This has a tendency to shape our expectations.Third, the instruments that Marsalis and the other musicians are playing on the soundtrack are top-notch and one wonders whether such instruments were available to Bolden, Cornish and the others in his band. They may have still been playing instruments that were passed out of Civil War service or gotten horns from makers like Henry Lehnert, John Heald, or even from Conn and Holton, who had cornered the market for Sousa and other high-end bands. All these elements make it a challenge for a jazz person to listen to the f