Jazz on an autumn afternoon.

Sunday afternoon was the occasion of my friend Jon’s annual jazz film festival.

Diana and I enjoyed a delightful walk through cascading autumn leaves to join Jon and Natasha, Ed, Graham, Lloyd and Misty for craft beers, snacks (including first-rate Russian salad), and two documentary DVDs that presented radically different perspectives of the genre and of the people who find the music eternally enjoyable and provocative.

As a uniquely American stew, jazz might also be our most unapologetically political musical art form, because it has so often uncomfortably mirrored the racial skeletons in the nation’s closet.

The Cry of Jazz (1959)

The film itself offers insights into the dialogue of the early Civil Rights movement and its relationship to the arts.

That's putting it mildly. From the intense polemics of Bland’s stark, rhetorical cinematic razor, we shifted to sunny Newport, Rhode Island, and a well-heeled, largely white, Rheinlander-fueled audience soaking up the sun and generous portions of Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong and Mahalia Jackson.

(And baritone sax master Gerry Mulligan)

Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1958)

Turn a fashion photographer loose on the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958, and what do you get?
· Lots of artsy-fartsy shots of sea, sail, and sun;
· Lots of "let’s make fun of the audience" shots of fat men in bathing suits (why don’t people like that just stay home?), chicks squinting in the sun, and guys scratching themselves;
· And (fortunately) lots and lots of great jazz.

Throughout the film, I expected to see yachtsman and sometime revolutionary scribe William F. Buckley maneuver a boat toward the harbor and sneer at the liberal New Englanders.

Given today’s emphasis on jazz and the myriad cultural implications therein, it was a complete coincidence that the Sunday Tribune published an appreciation by Chris Morris of New Albany’s own internationally recognized exponent of jazz, Jamey Aebersold, who was given a testimonial dinner last week.

Jazz ... sounds like the perfect excuse to stage an annual jazz festival on the riverfront, so long as the venue's monopolistic booking agent Bob Trinkle agrees and might actually be convinced to add an event of genuine cultural significance to his annual menu of musical cream of wheat.

I know of a local brewery (not Rheinlander) that might be interested in some form of sponsorship.

Ideas, anyone?