Sittin' In by Jeff Gold

Author:Jeff Gold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Design
Published: 2020-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

JG: Yeah, you got into that with [owning your own] record label.

JM: Yeah, it’s a step. Because it’s—how else?

JG: Makes all the sense in the world. The jazz scene of the 1940s and 1950s is very well documented and still fascinates fans and musicians and historians. Why do you think that is?

JM: I was saying this last night in thinking about Thelonious Monk. It’s because they were predicting the change that would happen fifteen years later. And they predicted it in basements. They saw the future. But they were showing it to us in musical form. And they were showing us that there were many languages that may be spoken at once, and you’d have to follow really closely to understand it. And you’d have to give it time. And you’d have to understand that everyone was allowed that platform. That’s the ideal. I think that’s part of what it is. I think that it’s part of one of the first generations—I may be making, I am making this up, because we all are, we’re all making this up. You can hear Thelonious Monk in this Town Hall concert. You hear him in rehearsal, and he’s talking with his arranger Hall Overton about how he didn’t want his band to sound like a big band, because the big band idea is too stiff. Now “stiff” has many connotations. Stiff is restrictive, oppressive. You know, it has all those connotations built into it. Now we know he’s talking about a generation of big bands that—not only the great big bands, but just the idea of the big bands is that you work in this way—

JG: And it’s very formatted.

JM: Yes, this [music] happens here. It happens every time. And he didn’t want his large ensemble to feel this way. And he also says under his breath, “It’s not that I don’t like it, I don’t want to say that.” He says this. But it’s critical of the generation before him, right? There’s a critique in there that bebop addresses, with not forty people, all dressed up the same, kind of behind a platform with all these formatted music stands—

JG: One guy calling all the shots.

JM: Yeah. [Bebop is a] small group in a basement. Pared down, showing you what recklessness looks like. And they do it in such a way because they rehearse it. It’s kind of like modern dance, like, What the fuck? They’re not dancing! That’s not choreography! But you know, as you learn the language, you understand: Ah, oh my goodness! Whereas the big band shows it to you in visual form, we show it to you en masse. [Big bands have] twenty bodies on the stage, right? We have all these uniforms. We have these moves that everybody does. [Hums and stomps a tune.]

JG: A very controlled environment.

JM: [Humming.] HEY! HEY! HEY! You know, right? We have all that, which is a part of the party. Bebop is suggesting that we’re not just party. We’re not just the party, we’re also complex individuals.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.