Fresh off of Mahershala Ali’s Oscar win for portraying Dr. Don Shirley in Green Book, there’s another musical legend we should be paying attention to and a new film is on the way to help us do just that. The life and work of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden, will be highlighted in BOLDEN, featuring the internationally acclaimed jazz musician (and executive producer) Wynton Marsalis, composing and performing the music for the upcoming drama starring Gary Carr, Yaya DaCosta, Reno Wilson, Erik LaRay Harvey, and Ian McShane, and directed by Dan Pritzker.
BOLDEN invites you to experience a world fueled by passion, greed and musical genius―in early 1900s New Orleans. Witness the compelling, powerful and tragic journey of Buddy Bolden, the unsung American hero who invented Jazz. With little biographical information known and no found recordings of his music, the film’s narrative comprises of fragmented memories of his past, against the political and social context in which his revolutionary music was conceived. The birth of jazz was the birth of American popular culture from Louis Armstrong to Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, The Fugees and Dr. Dre., Bolden is where it all began.
Bolden toiled on sidewalks and in clubs during a time of encroaching racial oppression. Persevering through the tightening grip of Jim Crow, he was instrumental in synthesizing ragtime, folk and and blues music with his new improvisational style and permeating the freewheeling Storyville section of New Orleans with his sound that still lives on as jazz.
Check out the exclusive sneak peek:
Bolden premieres nationwide on May 3.