10-part PBS series begins Monday night

Ken Burns: 'Jazz' is who we are

Ken Burns says six years of work went into the "Jazz" project. The 10-part series traces the music from its beginnings to the present

By CNN Staff

(CNN) -- "Jazz," Ken Burns' latest documentary, begins its 10-episode run Monday night on PBS.

A history lesson for some and a tuneful reminder of an art form for others, the work details the rise of this distinctly American music, its players and the profound influences both have had on 20th century culture.

CNN talked with Burns last summer about the new documentary.

CNN: Give us a sense of the scope of this project, how long it took and what went in to creating this.

Ken Burns: "Jazz" is really the culmination of six years of effort, and in another way, 16 years of effort, because I've been working on a trilogy of American life that began with "The Civil War," continued with "Baseball" and now comes to fruition with this history of jazz.

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It's 10 episodes, nearly 19 hours, has over 75 interviews, 497 pieces of music, 2,000 archival clips. It's just been a huge, mammoth project. But in the end, I think it tells us a lot about who we are as Americans.

"The Civil War" defined us. "Baseball" was a way to tell us what we'd become. "Jazz" is a wonderful look at the 20th century -- and, in a way, the mechanics of democracy and the future redemptive promise of this flawed republic. So in the end, it's just one hell of a great story.

CNN: Why did you choose "Jazz?"

Burns: "Jazz" chose me. I'm always interested in how my country works. "Who are we?" is the question that animates almost all of the films, and I'm particularly interested in race and how much race has played a part in our national self-definition.

Here is the only art form invented by Americans, and who is it invented by and then shared with the rest of the world, but African-Americans. You know, we put their holiday, their study, in the coldest and shortest month, February, and yet it turns out they're at the center of American history.

So to study jazz is to study race. But it's also to study the 20th century: two world wars, a devastating depression, for which jazz was the soundtrack. That got us through.

It's about sex, the way men and women talk to each other; it's the mating call of America. It's about drugs and the terrible, terrible cost of addiction, and it's about extraordinary human beings -- in some ways, as important as the founding fathers who have continued to show that the genius of America is the genius of improvisation.

...So by studying jazz we study who we are in a particularly creative and, I think, unbelievably dramatic way.

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PBS: 'Jazz'

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