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Jazz is a very accurate, curiously accurate accompaniment to 20th century America.

Ken Burns

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Ken Burns
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: July 29
Actor
Cinematographer
Film Director
Film Producer
Manufacturer
Producer
Screenwriter
Brooklyn
New York
Kenneth Lauren Burns
Kenneth L. Burns
Kenneth Burns
Curiously
Accurate
Jazz
Century
America
Music
Accompaniment

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History's just been made for sale to an inside deal.
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Do something that will last and be beautiful. It doesn't have to be a bridge-or a symphony or book or a business. It could be the look in the eye of a child you raise or a simple garden you tend. Do something that will last and be beautiful.
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I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America you have to know about the Civil War.
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Civics is in fact politics, and politics is how things work not only in the political realm but in every other realm. It may be this simple mechanical glitch that unites everything. This is my philosophy.
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Nothing in our daily life offers more of the comfort of continuity, the generational connection of belonging to a vast and complicated American family, the powerful sense of home, the freedom from time's constraints, and the great gift of accumulated memory than does our National Pastime.
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By its very nature, no one person can ever be the center of Jazz.
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I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films.
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There are no ordinary lives.
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It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past
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I enjoy total creative control right now. Nobody tells me to make it longer, shorter, better, sexier, more violent, whatever.
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When you are editing, the final master is Aristotle and his poetics. You might have a terrific episode, but if people are falling out because there are just too many elements in it, you have to begin to get rid of things.
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A jazz beat is a dynamic changing rhythm.
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The genius of our country is improvisation, and jazz reflects that. It's our great contribution to the arts.
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Wynton told us that Miles sold out, just wanted to make more money, just wanted to sell more records. I don't believe that Miles sold out but I'm not in a position to say.
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I can understand why some of these drummers and bass players become cult figures with all of their equipment and the incredible amount of technique they have. But there's very little that I think satisfies you intellectually or emotionally.
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You don't work on something for six years and be blind to the myriad of other approaches.
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History isn't really about the past - settling old scores. It's about defining the present and who we are.
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Louis Armstrong is quite simply the most important person in American music. He is to 20th century music (I did not say jazz) what Einstein is to physics.
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You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living.
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I record all of my music with authentic instruments in a studio before we start editing, doing many, many versions. The music shapes the film as we edit so it has an organic relationship to the content.
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