A critical companion to the most celebrated music documentaries of the twentieth century Documentary filmmakers have been making films about music for a half-century. American Music Documentary looks at five key films to begin to imagine how we might produce, edit, and watch films from an ethnomusicological point of view. Reconsidering Albert and David Maysles's Gimme Shelter, Jill Godmilow's Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman, Shirley Clarke's Ornette: Made in America, D.A. Pennebaker's and Chris Hegedus's Depeche Mode: 101, and Jem Cohen's and Fugazi's Instrument, Harbert lays the foundations for the study and practice of "ciné-ethnomusicology." Interviews with directors and rich analysis from the disciplinary perspectives of film studies and ethnomusicology make this book a critical companion to some of the most celebrated music documentaries of the twentieth century. Hardcover is un-jacketed. "A call for a ciné-ethnomusicology, American Music Documentary is as much an invitation for a critical, reflexive ethnomusicology. Forging new ground in the study―and making―of music films, it is an utterly compelling read."―Marina Peterson, author of Sound, Space, and the City "By connecting the analysis of musical styles and filmic techniques to broader social and economic issues, this book provides a new perspective on documentary cinema, and will encourage film studies scholars and students interested in documentary practices to engage more fully with sound and music."―Barley Norton, reader in ethnomusicology, Goldsmiths, University of London BENJAMIN J. HARBERT is associate professor in the music and the film and media studies departments at Georgetown University. He is the producer and director of Follow Me Down: Portraits of Louisiana Prison Musicians and co-editor of The Arab Avant-Garde: Music, Politics, Modernity. American Music Documentary Five Case Studies Of Ciné-Ethnomusicology By Benjamin J. Harbert Wesleyan University Press Copyright © 2018 Benjamin J. Harbert All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8195-7801-3 Contents List of Illustrations, viii, Acknowledgments, xi, Introduction, 1, 1 Where Is the Music? What Is the Music? Albert Maysles, Gimme Shelter (1970), 24, 2 Representing the Margins and Underrepresenting the Real Jill Godmilow, Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman (1974), 67, 3 The Use and Abuse of Musicological Concepts Shirley Clarke, Ornette: Made in America (1985), 108, 4 The Theater of Mass Culture D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, Depeche Mode: 101 (1988), 156, 5 Cinematic Dub and the Multitude Jem Cohen and Fugazi, Instrument (1999), 200, Epilogue: Toward a Ciné-Ethnomusicology, Appendix A: Extended Music Filmography, 255, Appendix B: Cited Interviews and Archival Material, 259, Appendix C: Glossary of Terms: Sounds, Shots, and Editing Techniques, 261, Notes, 265, Works Cited, 275, Index, 289, CHAPTER 1 WHERE IS THE MUSIC? WHAT IS THE MUSIC? Albert Maysles, Gimme Shelter (1970) Before I began any formal interviews with Albert Maysles for this book, he visited my university to speak about his films. Despite feeling eager for lunch, I waited as students spoke with him after his lecture. One asked Maysles if they could have their picture taken together. As a friend held up the student's camera phone, Maysles smiled and playfully directed the shot. "Closer! Come closer." He told the photographer how important it is to get the faces. I recounted this story to him a few years later in his living room. Maysles responded, "Robert Capa was asked to give advice to a photographer, and he said, 'Get close. Get close.'" But there is a more personal reason behind Maysles's interest in faces. It begins with his father. His father had a trumpet that he didn't play, tucked away in the closet. His mother said his father used to play music with his brothers but stopped after one of them died. "Even though my father couldn't perform, he did put on music — classical music of one sort or another. That's how I learned my love for music. Because as the music was playing, I was looking at my father for a change of expression." Maysles says he absorbed the love of music his father felt, in part by paying close attention to his face. Throughout Albert Maysles's music films, there are powerful shots of people listening: The Beatles amused at hearing "I Saw Her Standing There" from a transistor radio, Vladimir Horowitz and his conductor carefully listening to a recording of their performances of Mozart's Concerto No. 23, and two enraptured audience members behind Seiji Ozawa as he conducts Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. Maysles's cinematography brought a new intimacy to documentary film in the 1960s. This focus on faces is only one small aspect of a larger filmmaking philosophy. Albert and his brother, David, were some of the most notable documentarians of their time, pioneers of what is known as direct cinema. So, in 1969 when the Rolling Stones hired Albert and