Body and Soul: An American Bridge, 58 minutes, Shoga Films, 2017 is a documentary about composer Johnny Green’s jazz standard “Body and Soul”, as well as an exploration of the cross-cultural links between Blacks and Jews in the development of jazz music in America. Directed, written produced and co-edited by Robert Philipson, the production team also includes editing and visual/digital effects by Pad McLaughlin, sound editing by Dan Olmsted, and film editing by Carlo Kamin. The press kit for the award-winning film announces; “Out of all the cross-cultural encounters that have resulted in the richness of American popular music, none has been so prominent or so fraught with fraternity and conflict as the relationships between African Americans and American Jews… The Great American Songbook is replete with songs written by Jewish composers and inducted into the jazz canon by Black musicians.”
This reviewer had the opportunity to view the film on February 11, 2018 as the opening segment of the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership’s 2018 Sunday Film Series. The movie was introduced by renowned Chicago jazz bandleader/trumpet Orbert Davis, who demonstrated on his instrument some of the unique aspects of the song; Davis also conducted a question and answer session with the audience after the screening. Davis described the song as “an anthem, a confession of love directed to one person”, and stated the song “ushered in the be-bop explosion of the 30’s and 40’s.” He mused, “One note (in the song) connects the Jewish American experience with the Black American experience.”
The torch song “Body and Soul” was written by Johnny Green, a Harvard educated stockbroker, for the British actress and singer Gertrude Lawrence. It was first performed in the United States by chanteuse Libby Holman in the 1930 Broadway musical revue Three’s a Crowd. In the UK as well as in the US, the tune quickly became very popular. Louis Armstrong was the first jazz musician to record the piece in 1930; it has now been recorded hundreds of times by dozens of artists, with a number of different versions of the lyrics.
The film was unique in its use of informative commentary in the form of monologues from music professors across the country who offered insights about the relationships between Jewish and Black musicians and the development of this relationship through focusing on the creation and performance history of “Body and Soul”. The famous bridge section of the song and its unusual construction was a point of discussion throughout the film, Davis called it “the Golden Gate of American bridges”.
“Body and Soul” is usually performed in the key of D flat major, with the main part of the tune consisting of a repeated eight-bar melody, followed by an eight-bar bridge and a final eight-bar return to the melody. This 32-bar AABA form is said to be typical of popular songs of the time. However the bridge itself is considered to be highly unusual in its tonal center shifts. It has been described as “a bridge like no other” The song is also considered to be “a challenging piece to solo over” with “the unusual nature of the chords” providing a “large degree of improvisational freedom”.
The film was an interesting and very enjoyable meld of archival footage of the various musical personalities- composers, singers, and instrumentalists- accompanied by a great deal of information about the underlying topic. Mention was made of the early conception of Jewesses as “exotic”, the contrasting heritage of prejudice that Jews and American Blacks shared and the hardships they endured within the larger culture, their joint efforts to produce the quintessentially new American sound of jazz, how their suffering was transmitted through the music itself.
Don’t miss the next 2 films in the series:
Mandala Beats – MIDWEST PREMIERE
Sunday, February 18; 2:00 p.m.
Directed by Rebekah Reiko
Synopsis: Known as the Jimi Hendrix of bass guitar, Israeli Yossi Fine has made music with artists from across the globe. Learning of his grandmother’s Indian roots, he journeys to India to explore new sounds and collaborations. He discovers a world of Jewish music and performs with musicians including Shye Ben Tzur and Gil Ron Shama.
Ethnomusicologist Dr. Inna Naroditskaya will introduce Mandela Beats and lead a post-screening Q&A with the audience. Naroditskaya is a Professor at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music. A pianist from Azerbaijan, she came to the U.S. as a refugee with her then-four-year-old son. Naroditskaya has since completed her doctorate at the University of Michigan, published books on the music of Russia and the Middle East, been the recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Scholarly Residency and a Senior Fellowship at Harvard, and written on music, politics, and gender for the Washington Post, Pacific Standard, Times of Israel, and Huffington Post.
On the Banks of the Tigris – MIDWEST PREMIERE
Sunday, February 25; 2:00 p.m.
Directed by Marsha Emerman
Synopsis: Can music transcend religion and politics? Meet Majid Shokor, an Iraqi-Australian from a Muslim background who discovers a hidden history—the Jewish role in Iraqi music. Shokor journeys from Australia to Israel, Europe, and Iraq, to meet exiled Iraqi musicians and unite them in a concert at London’s Barbican Centre.
Dr. Shayna Silverstein will introduce On the Banks of the Tigris and lead a post-screening Q&A. Silverstein is an Assistant Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University. Her research examines politics, culture, and performance in the contemporary Middle East. Previously a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Penn Humanities Forum, Silverstein received her PhD in Ethnomusicology from the University of Chicago.
For information on the film series and all the wonderful programs at Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership, go to www.spertus.edu
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