Some Earlier Morning Thoughts While Listening to Thelonious Monk

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 105-106
Author(s):  
Larry Walker
Keyword(s):  
Thelonious Monk

ECCENTRIC, GIFTED, AND BLACK: THELONIOUS MONK REVEALED

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 381-402
Author(s):  
Ingrid Monson ◽  
John Gennari ◽  
Travis A. Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Primary Research ◽  
Thelonious Monk ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
American Composer ◽  
Personal Archives ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Right ◽  
First Time

Do not miss Robin D. G. Kelley's Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, for it will stand as the definitive biography of the great American composer and pianist for many years to come. What distinguishes Kelley's treatment of Monk's complicated and enigmatic life is the sheer depth and breadth of primary research, including, for the first time, the active cooperation and involvement of Thelonious Monk's family. In his acknowledgments, Kelley describes a long process of convincing Thelonious Monk, III to grant permission culminating in a six-hour meeting in which his knowledge, credentials, and commitment were thoroughly tested and challenged. Once he had secured “Toot's” blessings, as well as that of his wife Gale and brother-in-law Peter Grain, Kelley was introduced to Nellie Monk, Thelonious Monk's wife, and a wide range of family and friends who shared their memories and personal archives of photos, recordings, and papers. This is not an authorized biography, however, since Thelonious Monk, Jr. never demanded the right to see drafts or dictate the content. Rather Kelley was admonished to “dig deep and tell the truth.”

The Fragmentation of Jazz Styles

2021 ◽  
pp. 327-400
Author(s):  
Ted Gioia
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West Coast ◽  
World War ◽  
Third Stream ◽  
Thelonious Monk ◽  
John Coltrane ◽  
Modal Jazz ◽  
Modern Jazz ◽  
Miles Davis ◽  
Experimental Approaches

In the post–World War II years, jazz started to split off into many different directions, spurring a fragmentation that expanded the creative range of the idiom but caused long-lasting divisions among artists and fans (the so-called jazz wars). The first fault lines emerged between traditional and modern jazz exponents, but during the 1950s and early 1960s, many different styles emerged—including cool jazz, hard bop, soul jazz, West Coast jazz, modal jazz, Third Stream jazz, and various experimental approaches. This chapter traces these stylistic developments, and their leading exponents. It looks at the life and work of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Stan Getz, Charles Mingus, and Bill Evans, among other major jazz stars of the era, and assesses key albums such as Kind of Blue, Mingus Ah Um, and Giant Steps.

Monk’s Music: Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the Making

2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-181
Author(s):  
Michael C. Heller
Keyword(s):  
Thelonious Monk ◽  
Jazz History

Thelonious Monk

Grand Street ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 145
Author(s):  
Robert Andrew Parker
Keyword(s):  
Thelonious Monk

scholarly journals ‘We Wanted Our Coffee Black’: Public Enemy, Improvisation, and Noise

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Niel Scobie
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Hip Hop ◽  
Single Individual ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Thelonious Monk ◽  
The Past ◽  
Duke Ellington ◽  
Public Enemy ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Entire Society

In Music and Discourse, Jean-Jacques Nattiez theorizes that noise is not only subjective, its definition, and that of music itself, is culturally specific: “There is never a singular, culturally dominant conception of music; rather, we see a whole spectrum of conceptions, from those of the entire society to those of a single individual” (43). Noise in this context is therefore most often positioned as the result of music that runs contrary to an established set of rules. However subjective the assessments of both the musical producer and listener, Nattiez notes that these “‘criteria’ are always defined in relation to a threshold of acceptability encompassing bearable volume, the existence of fixed pitches, and a notion of order – which are only arbitrarily defined as norms” (45). If these criteria are arbitrary, then music might just as arbitrarily be redefined to valorize noise rather than eschew it, something true of Public Enemy and their musical aesthetic of noise. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) uses saxophone samples in many songs that act in tandem with the lyrics to form “an aggression against the code-structuring messages” (Attali 27) found in popular music conventions. Moreover, noise has been a part of the musical landscape for longer than we might think. Public Enemy’s examples are comparable to the use of dissonance in the music of jazz legends Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and others. Public Enemy created noise with saxophone squeals, erratic drums, and countless scratches on Nation, a recording that has influenced numerous hip-hop artists and it stands today as a critically lauded and influential album. This paper investigates Public Enemy’s use of saxophone samples as a strategy of creating noise as representative of ideals contrary to conventional Western musical practices, and as a bridge to African-American musical practices and suppressed voices of the past.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document