Bebop and Modernism Independent Research

Learn more about bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, Latin jazz, and the artists described in the essay. 
Possible topics include: (1) Dizzy Gillespie’s use of Afro–Cuban musicians and their influence on his music, (2) orchestration and arrangements by Gil Evans, (3) big bands of the postwar period (such as Dizzy Gillespie’s) as compared with bands from the Swing Era, and (4) exemplary soloists and the changing role of drummers in bebop bands.

Your personal research will culminate with a classroom presentation on your chosen topic Thursday May 2nd. This presentation will count as a quiz grade.

Scoring Criteria:
Creativity: 4- exceptional creativity and out of the box thinking, 3- demonstrates a moderate level of creativity and moments of out of the box thinking, 2- demonstrates minimal levels of creativity and little in the way of out of the box thinking, 1- lacks creativity or out of the box thinking.

Presentation: 4- fully engaged and captured the audience, 3- moments of engagement during the presentation, 2- few instances of audience engagement, 1- student as not able to engage the audience

Accuracy: 4- student presentation demonstrates a fully researched and accurate representation of the chosen topic, 3- moments of questionable research or scholarship, 2- many instances of questionable research or scholarship, 1- the presentation did not represent research or scholarship

Sources: 4- student presents a work with at least 3 cited sources, 3- student presents work with at least 2 cited sources, 2- student presents a work with at least 1 cited source, 1- student does not present cited sources

Listen Up! Bebop and Modernism

Example #1

to the following musical excerpts. Note the similarities or differences between bebop and cool jazz, considering musical characteristics such as: (1) instruments, (2) articulation, (3) use of vibrato, (4) dynamics, (5) timbre, (6) phrasing, and (7) rhythmic devices (see the Glossary  for definitions).

• Bebop: Charlie Parker’s Reboppers,  “Ko Ko”
• Cool Jazz: Miles Davis Nonet,  “Boplicity”
• Gerry Mulligan Quartet,  “Bernie’s Tune” (with Chet Baker)
• Dave Brubeck Quartet,  “Take 5”

Example #2

Bebop, cool jazz, and hard bop jazz soloists expanded the jazz vocabulary in the 1940s and 1950s. Their innovations, however, were solidly built upon the work of their jazz predecessors. Listen to the following excerpted trumpet solos. Describe similarities and differences in timbre, phrasing, articulation, use of vibrato, range, dynamics, rhythmic devices, and interaction with other musicians.

• Louis Armstrong,  “West End Blues”
• Roy Eldridge,  “Rockin’ Chair ”
• Dizzy Gillespie,  “Shaw ’Nuff”
• Miles Davis,  “If I Were a Bell”
• Clifford Brown,  “Blues Walk”

Example #3

Vocalists have always played an integral role in the shaping of jazz. Their moans, cries, bent notes, and timbral shadings have long been imitated by instrumentalists. And vocalists, in turn, have often turned their voices into instruments, improvising new melodies with scat syllables of every variety. Listen to the following examples of vocal jazz. Describe similarities and differences in timbre, phrasing, diction, treatment of the lyrics, use of vibrato, range, dynamics, and interaction with other musicians. Do changes in vocal styles reflect innovations in instrumental jazz and vice versa?

• Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong,  “St. Louis Blues”
• Louis Armstrong,  “Lazy River”
• Billie Holiday,  “Strange Fruit”
• Ella Fitzgerald,  “How High the Moon”
• Sarah Vaughan,  “Shulie a Bop”

Jazz, The Beat Generation

This assignment is a follow-up to the reading of the NEA Essay about jazz and modernism. Please review the essay here.

The Beat writers and poets of the 1940s and 1950s, such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, were strongly influenced by bebop musicians. Jack Kerouac, in books such as On the Road, attempted to adapt the rhythms and improvisation of bebop to prose. In a 1968 interview, poet Allen Ginsberg said that Kerouac “learned his line ... directly from Charlie Parker and Gillespie and Monk. He was listening to Gillespie’s ‘Symphony Sid’ and ‘Night in Tunisia’ and all the Bird–flight–noted things which he then adapted to prose line.” Ginsberg himself noted that his seminal poem, Howl, was influenced by tenor saxophonist Lester Young’s “Lester Leaps In.”

The Beats also saw bebop as a form of protest against white middle-class conformity in the post-World War II period. Sal Paradise, a character in On the Road, remarks, “This is the story of America. Everyone’s doing what they’re supposed to do.” Kerouac and other Beat writers saw bebop musicians as rebels and “prophets” that represented the best of American genius and artistic innovation.

**Read the following excerpts from On the Road and respond to the prompt  related to them and the NEA Essay #3**.

“They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes Awww!” (p. 5)

“I was adventuring in the crazy American night.” (p. 100)

“And as I sat there listening to that sound of the night which bop has come to represent for all of us, I thought of my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were really all in the same vast backyard doing something so frantic and rushing–about.” (p. 12)

“Once there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in the muds of New Orleans; before him the mad musicians who had paraded on official days and broke up their Sousa marches into ragtime. Then there was swing, and Roy Eldridge, vigorous and virile, blasting the horn for everything it had in waves of power and logic and subtlety—leaning to it with glittering eyes and a lovely smile and sending it out broadcast to rock the jazz world. Then had come Charlie Parker, a kid in his mother’s woodshed in Kansas City, blowing his taped–up alto among the logs, practicing on rainy days, coming out to watch the old swinging Basie and Bennie Moten band that had Hot Lips Page and the rest—Charlie Parker leaving home and coming to Harlem, and meeting mad Thelonious Monk and madder Gillespie—Charlie Parker in his early days when he was flipped and walked around in a circle while playing. Somewhat younger than Lester Young, also from KC, that gloomy, saintly goof in whom the history of jazz was wrapped; for when he held his horn high and horizontal from his mouth he blew the greatest; and as his hair grew longer and he got lazier and stretched–out, his horn came down halfway; till it finally fell all the way and today as he wears his thick–soled shoes so that he can’t feel the sidewalks of life his horn is held weakly against his chest, and he blows cool and easy getout phrases. Here were the children of the American bop night.” (p. 241)

*Jack Kerouac, On the Road (New York: Penguin Group, 2003).

Describe how Kerouac’s perspective on American culture differs from the traditional middle–class culture of the 1950s. See if you can identify characteristics of the prose that are similar to the musical characteristics of bebop.**

From Swing to Bop! A journey to "modern" Jazz

The big band era brought jazz to it's highest heights of popularity. Many stars  ascended during the big band era (Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra) while other stars were rekindled (Louis Armstrong). Along the way, some of the fundamental elements of jazz were being downplayed. Improvisation was taking a back-seat to group arrangements. Younger musicians, frustrated with the constraints of playing in the big bands, sought a new path...

Please read the NEA essay about the move to modernism in Jazz

Langston Hughes: The Poetry of Jazz

The influence of jazz (the music, the people, the settings) is a major factor in the work of Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes. Here are two poems in which that influence is more easily apparent. The Weary Blues is also accompanied with a video recitation of the poem accompanied by images and a soundtrack of the jazz age. This post has a considerable amount of information and I expect a considerable amount of thoughtful reflection and response. I will be counting your responses as a quiz grade, so substantive responses will earn you higher marks. Your responses should reflect your assimilation of material from all aspects of the course to this point. References to other artists and examples from other readings or recordings will be highly considered.

The Trumpet Player

The Negro

With the trumpet at his lips

Has dark moons of weariness

Beneath his eyes

Where the smoldering memory

Of slave ships

Blazed to the crack of whips

About his thighs.

The Negro

With the trumpet at his lips

Has a head of vibrant hair

Tamed down,

Patent-leathered now

Until it gleams

Like jetWere jet a crown.

The music

From the trumpet at his lips

Is honey

Mixed with liquid fire.

The rhythm

From the trumpet at his lips

Is ecstasy

Distilled from old desire...

But softly

As the tune comes from his throat

Trouble

Mellows to a golden note.

The Weary Blues 

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,

Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,

 I heard a Negro play.

Down on Lenox Avenue the other night

By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light

 He did a lazy sway . . .

 He did a lazy sway . . .

To the tune o' those Weary Blues.

With his ebony hands on each ivory key

He made that poor piano moan with melody.

 O Blues!

Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool

He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.

 Sweet Blues!

Coming from a black man's soul.

 O Blues!

In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone

I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan--

 "Ain't got nobody in all this world,

 Ain't got nobody but ma self.

 I's gwine to quit ma frownin'

 And put ma troubles on the shelf."

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.

He played a few chords then he sang some more--

 "I got the Weary Blues

 And I can't be satisfied.

 Got the Weary Blues

 And can't be satisfied--

 I ain't happy no mo'

 And I wish that I had died."

And far into the night he crooned that tune.

The stars went out and so did the moon.

The singer stopped playing and went to bed

While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.

He slept like a rock or a man that's dead.

VIDEO OF WEARY BLUES

After reading and listening to the poetry of Langston Hughes, describe how the writer uses the elements of jazz music to influence his writing. Does there seem to be a natural connection between the written word of Langston Hughes and the sounds and style of Jazz? Describe that connection. 

How does the language and imagery Langston Hughes use in his poem match the images and sounds you see and hear in the video?

We have been making the case for language and writing being interlaced with music. What other aspects of our culture get connected with music?

Langston Hughes- The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Langston Hughes is one of the most celebrated of the Harlem Renaissance writers. He wrote short stories, novels, plays and poetry which celebrated the struggles and achievements of African Americans. Often his work was influenced by the rhythms, melodies and themes of jazz music and the  culture of jazz that was at it's height in the 20's and 30's. We will be exploring one of his short stories in an upcoming class, but I'd thought we get acquainted with one of his poems.

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

Langston Hughes

I've known rivers:

I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy

bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I've known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

 From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used with permission.

You can hear Langston Hughes talk about this poem and recite the text HERE

What do you think of this poem? Did your interpretation of the poem change after hearing Langston Hughes speak about the poem and recite the text? Do you think poetry is an effective way of communicating the deep feelings in the human soul? Why or why not?

Jazz and Prohibition

Using the NEA Essay II, discuss the affect prohibition had on jazz music.

• What is prohibition?
• How and why did it affect jazz music?
• Did the law have the intended affect?

Contrasts in Style

Today we are going to discuss the contrasts in style of two famous big band leaders: Count Basie and Duke Ellington. Though their styles have contrast, their overall musical genre (Big Band) is the same.

• Do you listen to any musical styles that have an extreme contrast?
• What examples do you have of musical artists that have contrasting styles?
• How would you describe the contrasts in those styles?

Duke Ellington: Beyond Category

It was often said of Ellington, "He was a masterful pianist but his real instrument was the orchestra he led for half a century."

• Based on what you have seen and heard, what do you think is the meaning behind that statement?
• Duke Ellington's early music was often called "Jungle Music". Listen to the musical clip The Mooche. What are the characteristics of this piece that might lead people to describe the music in that way?