La La Land Is a Hit, But Is It Good for Jazz?

Guest speaker: Krin Gabbard
Professor Emeritus in Comparative Literature, Stony Brook University, and Adjunct Professor of Jazz Studies, Columbia University

The debates around La La Land (2016) tell us a great deal about the state of jazz today and perhaps even the near future. Although the film opens with Seb (Ryan Gosling) attempting to duplicate Thelonious Monk’s piano solo on “Japanese Folk Song,” many critics have charged that the film has very little real jazz. Others have emphasized the racial problematics of making the white hero a devout jazz purist while characterizing the music of the one prominent African American performer (John Legend) as all glitz and tacky dance moves. And finally, there is the speech in which Seb blithely announces that “jazz is dead.”

The place of jazz in La La Land makes more sense if we view the film as a response to several film musicals, including New York, New York (1977) and the Astaire/Rogers films. But La La Land is also a nuanced homage to Jacques Demy’s The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967). Demy’s film is infused with jazz-inflected moments, especially a score by Michel Legrand. And both La La Land and Demy’s film connect utopian moments with jazz. Consider the jazzish dancing and singing in the early scenes of both films as well as the improvised body movements of Mia (Emma Stone) as she engages in a call-and-response with Seb’s piano solo. Demy’s film was profoundly influenced by American jazz. La La Land returns the favor by celebrating Demy’s appropriations of the music.