Leading the Blues Brigade are A-list
director Martin Scorsese and
six other respected filmmakers who have created what Scorsese calls
"highly personal and impressionistic" feature-length films on the
blues. The seven-part PBS series is simply called
The Blues,
but the films are anything but simple in what they reveal about the
music and its relation to the country that spawned it (see Tune
In).
To executive producer Scorsese, auteur of
Raging Bull,
GoodFellas, Gangs of New York, and other hit films, the blues
is "the foundation of American popular music." German-born Wim
Wenders (
Wings of Desire, Buena Vista Social Club) calls it
"an urgent and extraordinary form of expression, the quintessential
20th-century music." And Charles Burnett, who directed
To Sleep
with Anger and
The Glass Shield, says the music is "an
essential source of imagery, humor, irony, and insight that allows
one to reflect on the human condition."
Joining Scorsese, Wenders, and Burnett in
The Blues are
Clint Eastwood, whose many credits include
Bird, his biopic
of jazz giant Charlie Parker, and
Straight, No Chaser, a
documentary about pianist Thelonious Monk; Mike Figgis (
Stormy
Monday, Leaving Las Vegas); Richard Pearce (
The Long Walk
Home, No Mercy); and Charles Levin (
Brooklyn Babylon,
Whiteboys).
Spike Lee was in the mix early on, but had to bow
out due to scheduling conflicts, leaving Burnett as the only
African-American director in the series.
The PBS series is the biggest, brightest float in a multimedia
parade called Year of the Blues, so designated by the U.S. Senate,
in part because 2003 marks the 100th anniversary of black composer
W. C. Handy's "discovery" of the blues while waiting for a train in
Tutwiler,
Mississippi. Along with the television series comes a
13-part bluesfest on
National Public Radio, a handsome book of
essays and archival material (
The Blues: A Musical Journey),
a fat CD boxed set, traveling exhibits, and numerous concerts. The
festivities kicked off in February with a bash at New York's Radio
City Music Hall featuring B.B. King,
Bonnie Raitt, Aaron Neville,
Mavis Staples, and others. (A film of that concert, helmed by
director Antoine Fuqua of
Training Day , will be released
late this year.) Taken together, this blues blitz could put the
music back on
America's cultural radar screen.