Monk: Shades of Grey

                As jazz drifted towards dissonance, atonality and the underground, the music put new demands on listeners. This new form, Bebop, was no longer concerned with the easy-listening melodies of the Swing Era or Duke Ellington. The new consumers of jazz were the Beatniks, rebelling against the tested norms of society; the easy listeners were gone.[1] The new school of jazz composers and musicians constituted an underground that seemed mysterious, at least at first, to popular society. But soon the beboppers – “Bird,” Dizzy, and Monk, were the popular subjects in jazz. Unfortunately, Bird and other beboppers were relatively coarse characters – junkies, narcs, and wife-beaters. This caused the general public to presuppose that Thelonious Monk, the father of modern jazz piano, was another reckless, drug-abusing, social transgressor. Sadly, this is far from the real story behind Thelonious Monk. Robin Kelley and Clint Eastwood, in their respective biographies on Thelonious Monk show an entirely different picture. Eastwood’s film, “Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser,” adds concrete recordings and videos that, in many ways, support Robin Kelley’s conclusions that Monk was a family man, well-versed in the composition and musical theory.  However, the two accounts of Monk are different in that Kelley’s book emphasizes Monk’s historical impact on the music, whereas Eastwood’s film is more concerned with the day to day genius, antics, and social character of Thelonious Monk.

                Robin Kelley’s main point is that Monk had a major impact on the composition and harmonics of modern jazz.[i] Although Kelley explores Monk’s childhood in San Juan Hill, it is to the ultimate point of establishing Monk’s background in stride piano. Listeners could “hear the great stride piano style from James P. Johnson and the blues and his great left hand.”[ii] This shows that Monk was not entirely new, but rather he was referencing stride while combining it with new harmonic structures. Kelley’s ultimate point is that Monk “increased the harmonic freedom” in music.[iii] Eastwood also explores Monk’s musical impact, but instead of explicitly saying what that impact is, he shows Monk performing in the international context. To me, this is a much more persuasive argument for Monk’s musical contributions. It shows that he was known world over, and that the world was hearing and accepting Monk’s music, dissonance and harmonic variation included.

                Kelley writes that “it took a village to raise Monk: a village populated by formal music teachers and local musicians.”[iv] This dispels the myth that Monk could not read music and did not know musical theory. However, it also shows that he was not just a musical genius. Rather, Monk was the product of a society, and his music reflects that. Monk’s song, highlighted in Eastwood’s film, A Crupsecule with Nellie, reflects this social upbringing.[v] The song is about his relationship with his wife, but in general it shows how Monk reflected his social relationships in his music. The slow building complexity in the first half of the song suggests the complexity of people, and maybe even that Monk himself cannot be summed up in one word – be it eccentric or genius. When Monk is in his neighborhood in Eastwood’s film, it also seems to reflect Kelley’s statement. That is, as Monk walks through the streets he seems to be connected to the neighborhood, rather than simply observing it.

                The two biographies portray Monk’s mental illness differently, but both have the same point. Eastwood seems to hint that Monk’s illness was always a factor, rather than a manifestation in his later life. Regardless, both biographies make the assertion that Monk was not a musical genius because of his mental illness, but rather because he was a classically trained, technically adept pianist.

                Nothing Monk did was ever cut and dry; everything was a shade of gray. He danced in circles; he spun around; he wore funny hats; his music could not be summed up in a single key. Even his answers to reporters were round-about. But this tells us something about the real Monk. It shows that he could not be classified definitively. Even Monk’s upbringing was complex. Regardless, both biographers, Kelley and Eastwood, show that Monk could not be grouped with the other beboppers. Instead, he was a multifaceted musical genius, reflecting his social location and his relationships within his music. The only difference is, Eastwood showed this by following the everyday life of Monk, while Kelley gave a more historical account.

---

[1] Although there were many different listeners, the Beat movement picked up on Bebop before the majority of jazz listeners.

---

[i] Youtube: Robin Kelley: Thelonious Monk. April 12, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1X4jo18Ibo

[ii] Robin Kelley. Thelonious Monk: the life and times of an American original. 125.

[iii] Youtube: Robin Kelley: Thelonious Monk. April 12, 2009. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1X4jo18Ibo

[iv] Robin Kelley. Thelonious Monk: the life and times of an American original. 15.

[v] Youtube: A Crepuscule with Nellie.January 20, 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIVoOwOMq2c

Hip-Hop Jazz is Dead

If Nas could have witnessed the “Swing Era,” he might have said ‘jazz is dead.’[1] After all, hip-hop and jazz are not so different. The factors that derailed hip-hop are similar to what befell jazz during the 1930’s; both were afflicted by producers, contracts, money, and a nearly instantaneous transition from the cultural outskirts to center-stage pop-America. As jazz found its way into the “Cotton Club” and other segregated venues, it also found itself coalescing into a mainstream – one defined more by formulas for success than artistic expression. Swing was now little more than an easy dance meter. It had moved away from the people that had built it from blues and stride, and towards popular society. Nonetheless, the “Swing Era” might be the most essential digression that jazz underwent, for several reasons.  First, commercialism allowed for artists like Billie Holiday to make the occasional foray into civil activism with songs like “Strange Fruit.”[i] Second, it highlighted the division between white industry and musicians.  Last, it furthered the general tension between white and black. Thus, jazz’s hyper-commercialization in the 1930’s fostered an explicit racial dialogue that was not extant in previous iterations of jazz.

                The Swing formula encouraged artists to produce whatever arrangement would satisfy popular society. However, this was a double-edged sword to a segregated, pre-civil equality, Jim Crow society like 1930’s America. Jazz, up until this point, had been built upon blues and the relative oppression that accompanied such an art form. In the 1930’s these elements had not been entirely eclipsed by the commercial movement. Thus, mainstream artists, like Duke Ellington, now had a commercial platform on which they could broadcast racially-influenced songs like “Black Beauty.” Thus, popular culture began to experience race and commercial jazz as complements, if only in small doses.

Although the labels and producers allowed for jazz artists to become commercially successful, many artists resented the band-agent relationship. As bands “surrendered much of [their power] to the impersonal institutions and corporations that increasingly controlled the business,” they became less involved in the direction of the music.[ii] With the totality of the labels, producers, and corporate analogs that controlled the swing business being white, an obvious dichotomy arises; the black musicians are subject to the white record company rules. Although not all of the bands were black, John Hammond, a premiere white jazz critic/agent, believed that “Negroes [were] superior” jazz musicians, thus furthering the notion that black bands were at the helm of the swing movement, and similarly, the premiere subjects of white-corporate industry.[iii]  Thus, the commercialization of jazz emphasizes race roles, specifically between producers and musicians.

Surely, Duke Ellington would have loved to perform on the same stage with any of the accomplished white musicians of the 1930’s. However, this idea was a taboo fantasy of an integrated society, much unlike 1930’s America. Nevertheless, most musicians still understood each other as equals. In this context, swing was the point “at which racial and class boundaries of brutally segregated 1930’s America were most permeable.”[iv] However, the clubs still kept the audiences segregated, if not entirely exclusive to blacks. In addition, the moguls of the swing industry were engrossed in the business of deciphering which musician was better, the white man or Negro.[v]  Furthermore, mass-media seemed to be more receptive to a white-washed imitation of black swing. Thus, race became an ever-prevalent topic, tossed around between audiences, bands, and moguls alike.

Even though hip-hop and jazz were both victims of the same hyper-commercialism and corporate industry, the respective end result was nuanced from one to the next. That is, jazz came out of the “Swing Era” with a newly found racial discussion, whereas hip-hop simply approached the asymptotic limit of mass production and commercialism. However, both jazz and hip-hop succeeded in sprouting some kind of counter-culture that sought to restore an art form, not a hierarchy of corporate mass-media business. In hip-hop, this came from the progressives – The Roots, K-OS, Nas and the like. In jazz, this came from the pioneering sidemen of bebop – Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Dizzie Gillespie. Ultimately, the promoters, agents, and executives that spurred the “Swing Era,” catalyzed a racial discussion of jazz, inspecting which color of musician had the best tone, and what kind of social message was acceptable under a white, corporate industry.

               

---

[1] A reference to Nas’s “Hip-Hop is Dead” – a record inspecting the commercialization of hip-hop by record companies and industry executives.

---

[i] 1939."YouTube - Billie Holiday - Strange Fruit." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. 4 Apr. 2006. Web. 08 Nov. 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs>.

[ii] Stowe, David. Swing Changes: Between Conjure and Kapital. 101

[iii] Stowe, David. Swing Changes: Between Conjure and Kapital. 78.

[iv] Stowe, David. Swing Changes: Between Conjure and Kapital. 73.

[v] Stowe, David. Swing Changes: Between Conjure and Kapital. 78-79.