Monk’s Music: Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the MakingThelonious Monk (1917-1982) was one of jazz's greatest and most enigmatic figures. As a composer, pianist, and bandleader, Monk both extended the piano tradition known as Harlem stride and was at the center of modern jazz's creation during the 1940s, setting the stage for the experimentalism of the 1960s and '70s. This pathbreaking study combines cultural theory, biography, and musical analysis to shed new light on Monk's music and on the jazz canon itself. Gabriel Solis shows how the work of this stubbornly nonconformist composer emerged from the jazz world's fringes to find a central place in its canon. Solis reaches well beyond the usual life-and-times biography to address larger issues in jazz scholarship—ethnography and the role of memory in history's construction. He considers how Monk's stature has grown, from the narrowly focused wing of the avant-garde in the 1960s and '70s to the present, where he is claimed as an influence by musicians of all kinds. He looks at the ways musical lineages are created in the jazz world and, in the process, addresses the question of how musicians use performance itself to maintain, interpret, and debate the history of the musical tradition we call jazz. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Monk and His Music | 17 |
1 A Biographical Sketch | 19 |
History Memory and the Making of a Jazz Giant | 28 |
Mork Memory and the Moment of Performance | 61 |
3 The Question of Voice | 63 |
Fred Hersch Danilo Perez and Jessica Williams | 81 |
Inside and Outside Monks Legacy Neoconservatism and the AvantGarde | 109 |
6 Classicism and Performance | 134 |
7 Monk and AvantGarde Positions | 158 |
Steve Lacy Roswell Rudd and Randy Weston | 185 |
Afterword | 205 |
Notes | 207 |
| 219 | |
| 233 | |
Monk and the Struggle to Authenticate Jazz at the End of the Twentieth Century | 111 |
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Common terms and phrases
aesthetic African American album approach aspects audience authenticity avant-garde avant-garde jazz bass bebop Blue Note Blue Note recordings canon chapter Charlie Rouse chord chorus cians classical music composer context create critics Danilo Perez described discourse Ellington engagement example father’s feel formal Fred Hersch harmonic hear humor idea important improvisation interesting interpretation interviews involved jazz history jazz musicians jazz performance jazz world jazz’s John Coltrane Lacy’s listening mainstream mance Marsalis Marsalis’s meaning melody Monk on Monk Monk tune Monk’s compositions Monk’s legacy Monk’s music Monk’s recordings Monk’s voice Monson motive musi musicians musicology one’s particularly performances of Monk’s pianist piano pieces player playing Monk’s music Porcelli practice reference relationship repertoire repertory rhythm rhythmic Roswell Rudd Round Midnight sense sicians significant solo song sound Steve Lacy style suggests T.S. Monk tempo Thelonious Monk thing tion track tradition versions Western classical Weston Williams Williams’s Wynton Marsalis