Dancing, Ritual and Expression (with audio)

The strong connection between dancing and jazz music is documented historically and as a metaphor for creativity.

During the first half of the twentieth century, it was common for a jazz musician to begin working with only rudimentary instrumental skills.[1] Playing in dance bands was a way to earn money, improve one’s skills, and learn new repertoire.[2]

The existence of dances that share their names with corresponding rhythmic figures, such as the Charleston and the Rhumba, makes this connection even more explicit and suggests a connection that it simultaneously musical and social.[3]

Thelonious Monk’s quartet is unique in that it explicitly states this connection between jazz and dance without also being a band for dancers.[4] Monk does this by dancing during performances.[5] Figure 1 shows Monk dancing while his band mate, Charlie Rouse, improvises.

Figure 1: the Thelonious Monk Quartet performing Evidence (Monk)

Monk’s dancing connects this performance not only to the dance bands of a previous era, but also highlights the ritual of dancing as a metaphor for creativity. Berliner says:

Under the soloist’s extraordinary power of concentration, the singing and visualizing aspects of the mind attain a perfect unity of conception with the body. The artist becomes intensely focused on the thoughts in the language of jazz – one upon the other – they are articulated as instantly as conceived. No lead time separates conception from expression, and the gap between intention and realization disappears. Some illuminate this experience with the metaphor of dance in the broadest possible sense.[6]

Berliner could be describing Monk’s behaviour in the video clip; he may seem oblivious, but his level of concentration and listening is such that, as soon as Rouse finishes improvising, Monk practically runs back to the piano, beginning his improvisation with Rouse’s final rhythmic motif.

Rhythmic vitality and concentrated listening, exemplified through music and ritual in Monk’s band by this act of ‘passing on’ a rhythmic motif from one soloist to the next as well as Monk’s dancing, are expressive of his connection with the African music brought to America with the slave trade.[7] This helps us appreciate the richness of Monk’s artistry; his highly crafted music gives voice to his efforts to forge a unique identity as an American jazz musician that simultaneously acknowledges his African heritage.

Here's the performance that accompanied this presentation:

Thelonious

Bibliography

Arom, Simha. African Polyphony and Polyrhythm. First ed. Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1991.

Berliner, Paul F. Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994.

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[1] Paul F. Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), 46.

[2] Ibid., 65.

[3] The former being associated with a dotted crotchet followed by a quaver in common time, and the latter a kind of clave used in Cuban music and dance.

[4] Some of Steve Coleman’s bands are other examples, see: http://www.m-base.com/sweet_science.html

[5] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjJYeCYO-hA (accessed 05/09/2011)

[6] Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation, 217.

[7] Simha Arom, African Polyphony and Polyrhythm, First ed. (Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1991).

The Nomadic Improviser as a Reflection of the Musician and Society (audio included)

The nomadic improviser wanders from (and back to) the path of telos in a productive fashion. By doing so he exposes the uncanniness of the ‘there’ (Levinas’ ‘Il y a’) and re-presents it as the ‘given’ (Heidegger’s ‘Es Gibt’). Gary Peters, in his book The Philosophy of Improvisation, explains this process as a way improvisation might be liberated from the need to be constantly ‘new’; the familiar (or ‘there’) may be presented ironically and deconstructed, thus reframing it and drawing out its latent expressive potential (the ‘given’).[1]

Such a performance process may take the form of shifting between written (the telos) and improvised (the productive wandering) material; it may illuminate both the written and improvised passages in unexpected lights. My performance contains written segments that present themselves as moments to be deconstructed, leading to a series of improvised musings. Thus each presentation of the written material is framed by, and frames, the improvisations, creating alternate readings each time.

J.S. Bach’s use of the ritornello in the ‘concerto grosso’ form, as discussed by Susan McClary, is reminiscent of this process.[2] McClary argues that the alternation between the (largely) fixed ritornello and the episodic material expresses what Bach experienced as the increasing tension between the totalitarian-oriented, collective society and the idiosyncratic individual. Thus she is able to re-situate Bach’s music in the society in which is what produced. Allowing the music to express Bach’s time, place and opinions.

Perhaps my performance, with its productive wanderings, might be thought of as expressing my opinions on contemporary music production in modern society: both practices, the improvised and written, are illuminated as something different to what they once were.

Here's the audio performance I have that accompanied the presentation of this paper:

Body and Soul

Bibliography

Leppert, Richard and Susan McClary, ed. Music and Society, the Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Peters, Gary. The Philosophy of Improvisation. London: The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., 2009.

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[1] Gary Peters, The Philosophy of Improvisation (London: The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., 2009), 119.

[2] Richard and Susan McClary Leppert, ed. Music and Society, the Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception (Cambridge University Press,1990), 23.