Dialogue: My Thoughts on the Class and Bahktin

Coming into this class, I had only a vague idea about the history of jazz. I subscribed to the simplistic view mirrored in the early jazz documentary New Orleans that great musicians like Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday single-handedly created jazz in New Orleans and brought it to Chicago and New York, where it automatically became America's music and came to define the 1920s (King Oliver, 37). From the start, this class challenged my original assumptions about jazz and gave me a new concept, dialogue, with which to interpret art.

One main assumption I held before taking this class was that jazz was immediately heralded as America's newest and greatest art form from its conception. I have since learned that it originated in the seedier districts of New Orleans at the turn of the 20^th century (Gioia, 34) and spread to Chicago and New York around the late 1910s and 1920s and remained a music played mainly for poorer black audiences. With the rise of radio, a few artists like Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington became part of a “nationwide mass medium” (Gioia, 136) that created the flashy image of jazz as America's music that most people hold today. And jazz did not stop developing there; as I learned later, musicians like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis continued to push jazz in new directions with styles like bebop and cool jazz (Gioia, 201). Through this class, I have gained a much fuller understanding of the evolution and history of jazz.

Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of dialogue as a catalyst for art is one of the biggest ideas that I have taken away from this class. As an example, jazz was a product of New Orleans' “commingling of Spanish, French and African influences” (Gioia, 6) with a splash of American individualism. It was not the product of a few gifted individuals, but rather was created in the context of the city's community. Players of early jazz in New Orleans and New York in the bordellos and rent parties were especially sensitive to the tastes of their listeners because if they failed to engage their audience, they would be tossed out on the street. As the communities who listened to jazz changed from poor Southern blacks to middle-class whites and finally to more artistically-bent Bohemian types, the sound of the music changed as well. Songs like “Carolina Shout” were “solid and groovy” (James P. Johnson, 29) enough to get the country people bouncing on the dance floor while Duke Ellington's pieces were more focused on creating moods and intricate melodic and harmonic structures (Gioia, 121). Bebop rebelled against both of these audiences in favor of a brasher, dissonant, hipper sound that caught the ears of coffeehouse patrons and starving artists. Each of these music styles were created by the dialogue between artist and community – jazz musicians would innovate and improvise and stuck with whatever meshed most with their peers and audience.

Beyond the bounds of this class, the dialogic theory can put any art into historical perspective. The simple religious imagery of many Medieval paintings reflected the desires of the main patrons of such art, churches and nobles. Then, when merchants in Italy began to get richer off of new trade routes, tastes changed and more sophisticated and less overtly religious art flourished. Michelangelo's masterpieces were both a product of his genius and the desires of his patrons, the Medicis. A more modern example is a show like How I Met Your Mother, which flourishes because it is easily relatable to the average American. Most people know a playboy Barney Stinson, or a hopelessly lovestruck Ted Mosby. Through the lens of dialogue, any form of art can be seen as a constant discussion between artist and consumer in order to create the ideal final product.

A Bohemian Monk: Thelonius and his Jazz Community

        San Juan Hill was one of the roughest neighborhoods in one of the roughest parts of the sprawling metropolis of New York. Its name, taken from a bloody battle in the Spanish-American War, underlines the violence and crime that ran rampant in the mostly-black neighborhood. However, just one street over was “another country” (Thelonius Monk, 19) populated by Italians, or Poles, and each group was constantly engaged in a battle for turf. Thelonius Monk lived and breathed this racially-charged environment, and learned how to handle himself in a fight. He walked to school in a pack in order to avoid the roving gangs of white boys. This is why he says there is “no reason” for him to do “that Black Power shit” – he had already lived it. However, the San Juan Hill community had many positive influences on Monk's developing musical style as well. The area was named “Black Bohemia” (19) for its huge number of black musicians and artists. The cultural and racial diversity was not always a source of conflict; many of Monk's unique styles (like his Latin tinge) come from a mixture of Southern black and West Indian cultural influences, and he received formal musical education from a Jewish Austrian. The local church helped Monk learn piano hymns and gave him an introduction to the energy of gospel while the nearby boy's club provided him with a positive social atmosphere to escape the danger of city life by making bands with other boys (29). Monk's virtuosic playing did not merely arise from his own genius – Monk's community helped shape the young man into a stellar musician and instilled in him an appreciation of music regardless of the player's race or culture.

        This attitude of acceptance and friendliness is integral to Monk's music and his persona. He turned away from the race politics espoused by many artists like Miles Davis and instead focused purely on his music. However, this is not to say that race was not important to his musical expressions. Norman Miller characterizes Monk as a “emotionally driven, uninhibited, strong black [man]” (232) who offered an alternative masculine identity for the black man, one centered on style and free expression. This is reflected in his playing, which while influenced by traditional jazz, West Indian/Latin music and classical music was still a completely unique sound that could only be defined as “Monk's style”. He had his own music, molded through his childhood community in San Juan Hill and refined by the jazz community in New York. The avant-garde/Bohemian community that formed around his music also transcended racial and gender boundaries, drawing whites, blacks, men and women. The Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter was the most illustrious of his fans and exemplified the diversity of Monk's musical community. The patronage of such highly influential (white) individuals proved invaluable whenever Monk did suffer from racism and discrimination. Nica first helped Monk regain his cabaret card after it was revoked following a narcotics charge reeking of racism where two white police officers approached Monk's car without provocation and found his friend's heroin between his feet. Another time in Delaware, she was driving with Monk and one of his friends when police officers pulled her over, beat Monk's fingers with blackjacks and found marijuana in a suitcase. She claimed the case in order to save Monk from losing his card again, as the officers would be more lenient to a pretty white lady than to a black man. The devotion of such fans to Monk helps add credence to his image as a genuine, friendly, truly skilled musician who inspired a community of free-living Bohemian artists and garnered fans from all walks of life with his truly unique sound.