Metrical Displacement and Group Interaction in ‘Evidence’ by the Thelonious Monk Quartet

Jazz pianist Thelonious Monk is known for his rhythmically complex compositions and improvisations. His typical 32-bar AABA form pieces provide a framework of musical norms in terms of harmonic movement, and thus a point of reference for the harmonic rhythm to be displaced. ‘Evidence’ is exemplary of Monk’s displaced rhythms, which creates a sense of metrical shifts during the head arrangement. Composed c.1948 and a frequent piece of Monk’s performance repertoire into the 1970s, a transcription and analysis of the recording from Thelonious Monk Quartet Plus Two at the Blackhawk demonstrates a conflicting sense of metre between band members of the quartet. This chapter investigates how the musicians negotiated metrical discrepancies in the composed section and the saxophone solo in terms of group interaction. A mediation of time is demonstrated by a displaced metre in the drums and each musician’s performative response to the discrepancy by providing musical signals during the course of performance. Through analysis of this performance, the chapter examines the way in which the musicians arbitrated a decisive point of reference within a confounding performance of overturning the beat. This chapter contributes to understanding rhythm and metre through improvisatory processes, augmenting scholarship on jazz through its analysis of the temporal constituents of group interaction.

The Fragmentation of Jazz Styles

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.

The History of Jazz

The History of Jazz, 3rd edition, is a comprehensive survey of jazz music from its origins until the current day. The book is designed for general readers and students, as well as those with more specialized interest in jazz and music history. It provides detailed biographical information and an overview of the musical contributions of the key innovators in development of jazz, including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and others. The book also traces the evolution of jazz styles and includes in-depth accounts of ragtime, blues, New Orleans jazz, Chicago jazz, swing and big band music, bebop, hard bop, cool jazz, avant-garde, jazz-rock fusion, and other subgenres and developments. The volume also provides a cultural and socioeconomic contextualization of the music, dealing with the broader political and social environment that gave birth to the music and shaped its development—both in the United States and within a global setting.

Modern Jazz

The rise of modern jazz—or “bebop” as it was called—dramatically changed the landscape of the music in the 1940s, transforming the genre into a truly progressive and experimental idiom. But this came at a cost, marking a shift from jazz’s predominance as a popular music, and turning it into an art music addressing a much smaller audience. This chapter looks at the innovations of the leading bebop musicians, especially Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk. Other artists addressed include Bud Powell, Lennie Tristano, Sarah Vaughan, and Dave Brubeck. The chapter concludes with an assessment of big band jazz during the post–World War II era, including the work of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton.

Songs of Immigrants and Emigrants

As a crossroads state, North Carolina’s population has more than doubled since 1970. Musical immigrants move here for the same reasons as everyone else: quality of life, cost of living, scenery, inspiration. The influx includes everyone from jazz giant Branford Marsalis to electronic inventor Bob Moog. It runs two ways, however, with African-Americans fleeing the Jim Crow South for brighter futures up North -- Nina Simone, John Coltrane, and Thelonious Monk among them.

Resistance and Protest in Percival Everett's Erasure

As argued by the literary critic Margaret Russett, Percival Everett “unhinges ‘black’ subject matter from a lingering stereotype of ‘black’ style [and] challenges the assumption that a single or consensual African-American experience exists to be represented.” The author presents such a radical individualism in his most admired literary work published in 2001. In Erasure, Thelonious ‘Monk’ Ellison, the main character and narrator of the book, pens a stereotypically oriented African American novel that becomes an expression of “him being sick of it;” “an awful little book, demeaning and soul-destroying drivel” that caters for the tastes and expectations of the American readership but, at the same time, oscillates around pre-conceived beliefs, prejudices, and racial clichés supposedly emphasizing the ‘authentic’ black experience in the United States. Not only is Erasure about race, misconceptions of blackness and racial identification but also about academia, external constraints, and one’s fight against them. The present article, therefore, endeavors to analyze different forms of resistance and protest in Percival Everett’s well-acclaimed novel, demonstrating the intricate connections between the publishing industry, the impact of media, the literary canon formation and the treatment of black culture.

Sonic Grounding and Internalizing Structure: Themes of Continuity in the Music of John Coltrane

(Opening paragraph): Examining the musical development of John Coltrane, one often gets a deep sense of change. Respected Coltrane scholar Lewis Porter characterizes Coltrane’s career by the “fact that he was constantly developing and changing.” To account for this perception of change, the tendency is to divide Coltrane's music into segmented stylistic periods. This allows us a greater understanding of Coltrane’s developmental building blocks, and the specific elements that he focused on while creating his music. For example, Eric Nisenson divides Coltrane’s work into “Early Coltrane” including his work with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and his first recordings for Atlantic, a “Middle Period” including his work with Thelonious Monk and the early Impulse recordings, and finally a “Late Period” including Coltrane’s avant-garde albums. In The Dawn of Indian Music in the West Peter Lavezzoli states “Coltrane’s music went through more evolutionary stages during his ten years as a solo recording artist than many musicians realize in a fuller lifetime.” Historical and bibliographical references including the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians also characterized Coltrane’s development as moving from one period to the next.

Jazz em cisma

Este trabalho parte da percepção de que a obra do pianista e compositor de jazz Thelonious Monk, para além de sua grande relevância musical, pode ser vista em uma dimensão canônica e simbólica que, através de suas composições, do seu jeito de fazer música e, também, de sua personalidade marcante que beira a excentricidade, Monk parece ter se tornado uma espécie de mito, um emblema capaz de influenciar e pautar as discussões ligadas ao jazz. Neste sentido, o objetivo deste trabalho é observar como este emblema parece, de certa forma, ser um elemento em disputa, uma espécie de capital simbólico usado para validar diversas correntes musicais, especialmente a vanguarda e o neoclassicismo, que parecem disputar uma certa hegemonia dentro do campo da musicologia do jazz. Muito desta discussão pode ser visto nas obra de autores como Daniel McClure (2006), David Ake (2002), que discutem a consolidação do cânone jazzístico e as disputas dentro deste campo, e Robin Kelley (1999), que discute como a obra e a imagem de Monk foram apropriadas por grupos, de ambos os lados, que tentavam consolidar uma tradição e uma narrativa sobre o que é o jazz. Além destes autores é conveniente trazer à discussão algumas percepções ligadas ao campo neoclássico a partir de textos como The Jazz Tradition (1993), escrito por Martin Williams, e os textos do trompetista Wynton Marsalis (2008). Por fim, através das gravações de releituras feitas das composições de Thelonious, será possível, sonoramente, observar como cada um destes campos se apropria deste repertório e quais discursos musicais eles tentam validar a partir dele.