[1] It uses footage of Chicago's black neighborhoods, performances by Sun Ra, John Gilmore, and Julian Priester and the music of Sun Ra and Paul Severson interspersed with scenes of musicians and intellectuals, both black and white, conversing at a jazz club.
It has been credited as being an early example of the Black pride movement and with predicting the urban riots of the 1960s and 1970s, and has been called the first hip-hop film.
[4] The Library of Congress had this to say of the film and its significance: Cry of Jazz...is now recognized as an early and influential example of African-American independent filmmaking.
Director Ed Bland, with the help of more than 60 volunteer crew members, intercuts scenes of life in Chicago’s black neighborhoods with interviews of interracial artists and intellectuals.
Parts two, four, and six are done in a documentary style and utilize footage of life in Chicago as well as of Sun Ra's band performing the music.
Alex elaborates on Bruce's point, explaining "the Negro was the only one with the necessary musical and human history to create jazz."
Alex makes a direct comparison between the structure of jazz and the Black experience in the United States.
Alex continues to explain jazz as the "triumph of the Negro spirit" over the difficulties Black people face in a racist America.
Bruce and Natalie again express confusion with the claim that Blacks see America differently than Whites.
Footage of Sun Ra's band playing examples of each style accompanies the description of each type of jazz.
The film ends with Alex's assertion that the world's perceptions of the United States will depend on American society's treatment of black people.
In the early to mid 1950s the composer Edward Bland, novelist Mark Kennedy, city-planner Nelam Hill, and mathematician Eugene Titus conceived the idea for The Cry of Jazz.
Bland assumed the role of director while maintaining his job as a postal worker, the income from which he devoted to the film.
Along with Bland, Kennedy, Hill, and Titus contributed personal funds to the film, which amounted to a final budget of approximately $3,500.
Given this minimal budget, Bland and his co-creators relied on an entirely volunteer cast and crew of 65 people to complete the production of The Cry of Jazz.
[9] Bland wrote the screenplay for a sequel to The Cry of Jazz titled The American Hero, but received 109 rejections from production companies, causing him to abandon the project.
In the early years of that decade, Bland, Hill, Kennedy, and Titus frequented a club in Chicago's Southside called Jimmy's, where they would converse with young musicians and jazz fans, both black and white.
In 1960 the filmmaker Jonas Mekas organized a viewing and discussion of The Cry of Jazz in New York City.
Time Out also became extremely popular for a jazz album, and catapulted Brubeck to international fame.
This new style did away with many of the characteristic features of jazz, including easily discernable rhythms, regular form, and planned harmonic structure.