Directed by Edward Bland • 1959 • United States
Starring George Waller, Dorothea Horton, Melinda Dillon
Featuring music by Sun Ra and his Arkestra, this landmark semi-documentary explores—via a heated conversation between a group of Black and white jazz aficionados—the relationship between jazz and race in America. Touching on the development of jazz as a distinctly African American art form born of Black struggle and the insidious co-option of Black culture by white people, THE CRY OF JAZZ proved explosively controversial both for its frank discussion of race and its bold proclamation that “jazz is dead.”
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