Bop, Bebop, etc
Thelonius Monk
Comparison
”Chain Gang Blues” (1926)
- traditional:
- 12-bar blues / progression
- style of vocals
- vocals + bass (?) + unknown accompaniments
- trumbone solo
”Blue Monk” by Thelonius (1954)
- 12-bar blues
- drums + bass + sax + piano, no vocals
- Monk stands up and trods around, stage element
- two individual solos
- 11-tone collection instead of traditional hexatonic blues scale
Avant-garde art
Charles Henry Alston, “Dancers”
- abstract style, vibrant colors
Charles Mingus
- mixed race: {Chinese,African,Native,German,Latin}-American
- slides focus: album arts and correlation with the music
- skills
- bass
- classical training
- gospel music
- LP as text
- Landmark LPs: Ah Um, etc
- LP now has album art (disc jacket)
- avant-garde style album art
- ”Haitian Fight Song” from The Clown
- only bass (Mingus) for intro solo
- length: 12:11
- bluesy
- elements/style that refers back to early roots of jazz (church, tribal, ?)
- relate to Haitian history: oppressed by French banks after independence
- Ah Um
- tracks refer to Jazz musicians (and sometimes non-musician people)
- also abstract album art
- ”Fables of Faubus”
- Faubus: governor of Arkansas who opposed racial integration
- satirical piece that mocks Faubus (“idiot walking down the street”, Ryan), with protesters (students) moaning in the background
- Columbus Records banned Mingus from singing the lyrics (heavily apparent criticism of Faubus’s policy) → instrumental version
Miles Davis
- 40s-50s
- played all progressive styles of Jazz (no early Jazz / Dixieland)
- cool jazz ahead of his time
- non-traditional
- fashionable clothing
- collaborates with white artist (e.g. Sting from Police)
- distinct personality: doesn’t care about stage presence (turns his back to audience sometimes as he’s playing)
- heroine addiction and rehab (1949)
“Walkin”
- 12-bar blues
- embellishments
- flurry of notes-style improvisation
Improvised soundtrack
- aimless
- carefree/careless
- melancholic
- isolated
The Awakening Years (late 50s-60s)
John Coltrane
- Fired from Miles Davis quartet due to drug abuse
- 1957: cold-turkey detox → spiritual awakening (then recorded A Love Supreme)
- influential LP
- Giant Steps
- My Favorite Things
- A Love Supreme
- St. John Coltrane Church (not formally recognized)
- generally religious and spiritual, but not attached to specific denomination
- ”Giant Steps”
- complex: speed and harmonic-wise
- 26 chords, 10 key changes
- modulation based on key of fifths
- ”Sheets of sound”
- Mandalas: created mandalas (circular diagrams) of how scales and keys interconnect
- ”My Favorite Things”
- based on song from The Sound of Music
- turned a tonal song to modal: modal music defeats usual expectation of tension and resolution, half-tones no longer always gravitate toward diatonic tones
- the fact that modal chords are not functional are akin to church chants, the chords suspend the music to enable it to continue ad infinitum
- A Love Supreme
- Bass Obstinate: bass playing the same motif repeatedly
- ”Psalm”: poem that Coltrane wrote but played on saxophone
Free Jazz
- no notes
Latin Jazz
- Influence of Cuban music
- Bizet, Carmen (opera, 1875)
- Mulatta
- Bizet, Carmen (opera, 1875)
- Influence on latin music (e.g. Spanish)
- call and response