“94 - 7 the Wave.” “The Girl from Ipanema” playing in the elevator as the Blues Brothers take a quick break from their mad dash from the law.  These were the images evoked by the word jazz before my participation in this class.  Surely jazz was just a wine and cheese kind of a music, for serous listeners only.  Poetry might accompany a jazz performance, as a college-aged beatnik did his best to deal with the angst he held toward his parents, and the lack of hugs he received from his father.  Nothing meaningful was being said in the music, and musicians were just robots, reiterating standards without soul or emotion.  In this class I discovered that nothing, is further from the truth, because suddenly in the right context the music comes alive.  Never were my assumptions of jazz more radically altered than after discovering the genesis of bebop, and the musicians that were a part of it.  In today’s world of pitch perfect pop music, nothing less than perfection is acceptable, and any problems in life will be solved by the end of three minutes.  Yet unemployment remains high, the wealth gap is widening, and the political discourse is just short of violent and heated.  A similar irony existed during the swing era, with proud, patriotic faces on war time propaganda, displaying cultural norms that should be adhered to, and proclaiming the necessity to protect global democracy and freedom for all.  Yet at home, there was racial tension in the streets under harsh labor and living conditions, that was touted as freedom and progress(Stowe).  Swing music was content to provide background music to social dancing, with simple riffs, and accessible vocals(Gioia, 201).  Bebop sought to reinstate the hard edges that had been softened, insert a dissonance to reflect the social and racial tensions, and present a big middle finger to white appropriation of music by playing in a fast, attacking style that could not be copied.  The large dance halls of the big bands were now replaced by tiny clubs where “Slow dancers seeking a romantic interlude were now advised to keep their distance from the bandstand(Gioia, 209).”

Spatial environments have long been a part of jazz music.  Listening to early New Orleans jazz, like Louis Armstrong’s “Basin Street Blues,” you can almost feel the sweat begin to bead up on the back of your neck, as the tempo drags alongside the muggy bayous.  This spatial component, along with the economic, social and political dynamics that shaped the music and musicians was a new concept for me.  I had never even considered any influences on music other than other artists and genres.  Bebop embodies this influence from the spatial environment.  When Miles Davis first moved to New York to attend Juliard, he was immediately struck by the people.  The tall buildings, the noise, the pacing of the city, and the mobility that the subway provided all made their way into the music(Davis, 51).  They took on the form of fast paced music, and slick dressed musicians.  Minton’s, where many beboppers cut their teeth, was known  as a place where you might be beaten if you got on stage and did not perform up to standard(Davis, 54).  In the case of Thelonious Monk, he was able to procure a long term gig at the Five Spot Bar, where he could develop his individual voice.  If he had been out on the road traveling, he might not have had the same opportunity.  He also would have missed the support he received from his family and close friend that kept him from falling prey to the vices that destroyed many other jazz careers(Kelley).  All of this suggests that the musicians, and jazz as an art form, benefitted from the relationship it had with its surrounding community, which is in stark contrast to the genius theory of Ken Burns.

Through this class I have discovered the context in which jazz was created, which has provided a much better understanding of the genre.  You can hear so much more of what is being said when you put things into historical perspective.  By getting to know the personalities of Monk and Davis especially, I have developed a much greater appreciation for jazz, and I can now apply those same principles of critical thinking to other genres and contexts.

Let the Music Talk for You

     Freedom from want, and freedom from fear, fundamental freedoms that everyone ought enjoy.(Kennedy, David).  Franklin Roosevelt proposed the Allies were fighting for those in WWII, and later the U.S. would join the fight in a claim to protect those freedoms.  The conditions experienced in the San Juan Hill neighborhood of New York during that time, made this contradictory.  Fear and want were not in short supply, with the strong racial tensions and the dismal living conditions.  The tenements were like, “human hives, honeycombed with little rooms thick with human beings ... no fresh breezes, only foul air carrying too often the germs of disease (Kelley, p16).”  Tensions between the Italians to the north, and the Irish to the south were fierce, and consistently produced race fights (Jazz in New York, New York Times).  Somehow Thelonious Monk was able to find beauty in the dissonance of this situation as the community of San Juan Hill fostered his creativity, and propelled him to a storied music career.  

Many jazz musicians were thrust into the spotlight while they weighed in on uneasy relationships between blacks and whites.  Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis both approached the subject with angst and reproach.  Gillespie even suggested that he might mistake white soldiers for the enemy if given and gun and sent to fight in the war (Fraser, p120).  Thelonious Monk on the other hand, avoided the traditional politics of race.  In an interview for Down Beat magazine Monk was quoted as saying, “My music is not a social comment on discrimination or poverty or the like.  I would have written the same way even if I had not been a Negro (Kelley, p249).”  He did his best to either avoid the subject or put a positive spin to it, telling his friend Larry Ridley, “Ain’t no drag, Larry because everybody wants to be young,” after Larry complained of whites calling them “boys” (Kelley, p417).  When discussing the violence endured by young people in San Juan Hill, Monk addressed the diverse black population of Caribbeans, West Indians, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and blacks from the American South, the influence of which is later heard in compositions such as “Bye-ya” and “Bemsha Swing” (Kelley, p19).  He tried to point out that there was more to America’s troubles than just the black and white tensions.  Monk’s experiences in the community of San Juan Hill led him to approach the subject of social justice and the black freedom movement differently than other jazz musicians during the era.

Throughout his life in New York, Thelonious Monk was continually supported by his family, his friends, his peers, and his community.  As Europeans came to New York to escape WWII, Monk had a Jewish-Austrian as his piano teacher.  The neighborhood was filled with influential professional and amateur jazz musicians.  His mother, Barbara, allowed for open discussions at the dinner table, and raised him on church hymns, although she was a stickler when it came to learning music.  His close friend Baroness Pannonica outfitted her house in New Jersey with a piano upstairs and a ping pong table in the basement with Thelonious in mind.  His manager, Harry Colomby, often drove him to performances and was able to procure his most important job at The Five Spot bar.  Monk was able to play at the Termini’s Five Spot Bar, night after night versus being out on the road.  He was able to bring his children and family up on stage, and avoid the vices that most other musicians fell prey to.  The Termini’s threw him birthday parties, and he was home for family birthdays, that he would not have other wise been there for had he been on the road.  In the small club he experimented, and developed an individual sound that expressed the dissonance of the community through dissonance in the music.  Monk found beauty in the reality, and ugliness of the living conditions and racial tensions in San Juan Hill (Kelley).

As the community supported Thelonious, through his music Monk fostered a community of artist, poets and musicians.  They all rallied around their collective rebellion against the conformity to middle class norms.  He tried to avoid racial politics, but it was inevitable when a white woman refused to serve him during a road trip.  He could no longer remain well behaved and cooperative, and the rage that had been simmering in the dark, boiled out into the open (Kelley).  His cabaret card was revoked for a third time after he resisted arrest by police, and he could avoid the subject no more.  When he returned to his music, though, he continued to transcend the race conflict he considered a given, and chose instead let the music do the talking.