THE JAZZ SINGER | Blacks, Jews, and Jazz | Film and Discussion

 

The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson was the first hit Hollywood film musical with synchronized sound.  Telling a story about Jewish assimilation via jazz music, the film notoriously featured Al Jolson in blackface for its climatic numbers.

 

Rent and watch the film on Youtube and then join Dr. Dwight Andrews and Dr. Matthew H. Bernstein for discussion of its use of jazz, its racial dynamics, and its place in the long and unfortunate history of the representation of Blackface, which persists to this day.

 

Rev. Dr. Dwight Andrews -  A native of Detroit, Michigan and a product of the Detroit Public Schools System. He graduated from Cass Technical High School and received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Music from the University of Michigan. He continued his studies at Yale University, receiving a Master of Divinity degree in 1977 and his Ph. D. in Music Theory in 1993. He was ordained into the Christian ministry in 1978 by the United Church of Christ. His ordination was held at Plymouth United Church of Christ in Detroit where his first interests in ministry were shaped and nurtured by the Reverend Nicholas Hood, Sr. and the Reverend Roger Miller.

 

Dr. Mathew H. Bernstein - A native of Long Island, New York,  Dr. Bernstein has been teaching film history and criticism at Emory since 1989.

Courses range from Introduction to Film and the History of Film two semester sequence to more specialized classes on African-Americans in American film, American film comedy, American film and media criticism, classical Hollywood cinema, the history of documentary film, Japanese cinema, post-war European cinemas, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa and Billy Wilder.