Perception of Jazz

Prior to taking this course and learning about the emergence and development of jazz in different cities, my perception of jazz was that it was an unchanging, boring genre.  Without the knowledge of the African aesthetics that influences the sound, performance, and growth of jazz as a process, I associated jazz with music one hears in their grandparents home and the hold music on the telephone that everyone despises.  Taking this course, “History of Jazz”, has revised my previously negative assumptions and has inspired and interested me into discovering and learning about different styles of music.  My opinions about jazz have transformed from monotonous and dull to exciting and unexpected through the concept and discipline of improvisation. 

According to lecture, jazz is a process, not only a style (March 12, 2013).  It is the process of the growth and evolution of a changing art form.  Over the course of history, jazz has adapted to its community and environment in satisfying the listeners’ cultural needs.  “It is a dialogue with one’s ‘temporal and spatial environment’ by performing European music in an African way” (Improvisation, March 12, 2013).  In order to successfully communicate with their audiences, the musicians needed to improvise.  My idea of improvisation prior to taking this course was a comedian’s ability to spontaneously think of something on the spot, or for a student to improvise a speech that they had not prepared.  However, spontaneity is not the only necessary element to improvisation.  Improvisation involves a dialogue in which the musicians adapt and respond to the audience.  “The Harlem of rent parties and underground economies created music” (Gioia, 94).  In New York, there was a constant competition to get and keep jobs, and a musician’s livelihood depended on it.  This pressure forced the performers to use improvisation to satisfy a diverse crowd (Improvisation, March 12, 2013).  This concept contributed to the development of a new, unique jazz style, Stride, and continued the process and evolution of jazz. 

           

Thelonious Monk

            The community that Thelonius Monk grew up in shaped not only his personal beliefs and attitude, but it also shaped his style and uniqueness as a musician.  San Juan Hill was reputable as a violent community, and the crime and violence was especially dominant by the time Monk and his family settled down there.  “The daily violence young people endured in San Juan Hill haunted Thelonious for many years to come” (Kelley, 18).  Monk responded honestly to the interracial and intraracial violence that pervaded his neighborhood by saying, “There’s no reason why I should go through that Black Power shit now.  I guess everybody in New York had to do that, right? Because every block is a different town (Kelley, 19).  The community that Thelonious experienced made him unavoidably subject to racism.  However, instead of becoming more race conscious, he took his frustration and used his unique form of bebop to create a new community.  Like Lionel Hampton and his song “Hey Pa Pa Rebop”, Monk used music as a way out of the self -destructive frustration that the racial community created.

            Monk developed a “Bohemian community bound together by a tolerance for modernity, for dissonance in music and for the avant garde in art and life” (Second Monk, February 28, 2013).  According to lecture, this newly created community was not simply black (February 28, 2013).  In such a racist community, blacks were restricted from dining inside, forced to different areas to get takeout, and were still vulnerable to race riots even though black students outnumbered white (Kelley, 20).  The inequality that Monk and his family inevitably experienced was transcended through Thelonious’ music reflecting the dramatic social and political transformation of the 1950’s and 1960’s. 

            Growing up, Monk was surrounded by cultural diversity and “virtually every kid became a kind of cultural hybrid” (Kelley 23).  His piano teacher, Simon Wolf, was an Austrian- born Jewish man who taught Thelonious works by Chopin, Beethoven, and other classical artists rather than exposing him to jazz (Kelley 26).  However, the neighborhood was full of jazz sounds and Thelonious learned from the many jazz musicians in his area.  In addition, “the church proved to be another critical source of Monk’s musical knowledge” as Barbara Monk, Thelonious’ mother, raised her children religiously (Kelley, 27).  Monk’s music expresses this diversity of influences that shaped his childhood. 

Monk’s music became the epitome of modernism.  It was off beat and angular and there was a certain unpredictability  about how he interacts with his musical environment.  His band member remarked, “You have to be awake all the time.  You never know exactly what’s going to happen.  Rhythmically, for example, Monk creates such tension that it makes horn players think instead of falling into regular patterns” (Kelley, 230). 

            Although Thelonious was able to grapple with San Juan Hill’s racial tension by turning it into emotional expression in his music, he failed to do so in his arrest in 1958.  While Monk and Nica were in Delaware, he was refused water at a motel and was told to leave immediately.  Later, after being told by an officer to get out of his car, he responded by saying “Why the hell should I?”.  “…one cop started beating on his hands with a billy club, his pianist’s hands” (Kelley, 254).  This incident, in which he was punished for a crime he didn’t commit, had a lasting effect on Monk’s psychological health.  It proves that Thelonious Monk was also a victim of racial injustice, and even though bebop was way to express emotions, it was impossible to eradicate racism entirely.