BEBOP IS "CEREBRAL"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 491, 19 November 1948, Page 8

BEBOP IS "CEREBRAL"

Latest Jazz Style Appeals to. the Intellect — They Say

sk O more than a few Americans bebop is the "new music." It is certainly one of the latest developments in the jazz world, where its complicated, irregular rhythms and "weird" new chord combinations are emerging from the obscurity in which they rested in the war years, and beginning (though only just beginning) to storm the portals of hot jazz, blues, swing, and boogiewoogie. Jazz originated, as nearly everybody knows, in the smoky bistros and honkytonks of New Orleans at the end of last century. From there its Negro practitioners catried it up the Mississippi on the riverboats to St. Louis, Kansas City, and Chicago, and from the banks of the river it spread outwards’ through the States-to the mid-west, the west, the south-west, and finally to the east. And as the years passed changes in the nature of this original jazz took place. Big-band jezz developed (Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw), and there was "symphonic" jazz (Paul Whiteman). There appeared different instrumental styles (Chicago breakdown, New York and Harlem); different piano styles (boogie-woogie), and. different vocal styles (blue torch and scat singing). And of course there was swing. Jazz impinged on classical music (Rhapsody in Blue), and classical music impinged on jazz (Rio Grande). But basically all. this music was still the good old New Orleans jazz, played primarily as dance music, and characterised by its four beats to the bar, with

accents on the first and third beat. Then around about 1940, so the story goes, some; players felt they wanted to do something different. "We got’ tired of that old New Orleans beat-béat, ‘I- got-the-blues stuff," one. ‘jazz is reported to have said. And .out ofthat mood of rebellion bebop. was born, for in the bebop style of playing, although the characteristic steady pulse of jazz is present, the beats are so well disguised that to the = uninitiated oapy, don’t appear to be there at all.’ yy "Intellectual" ‘Music. That is one aspect of bebop. Another is that it has intellectual’ pretensions. It tries to. be more than just dance music, It has been described as "sophisticated, highly literate, and immensely cerebral." Another fan says’ it bears the same relationship to jazz that a Henry Moore sculpture: does to a Rodin, One of the. leading beboppers, a_ scholarly, 21-year-old . Negro called Thelonius Monk, said "We. Jiked Ravel, Stravinsky, Debussy, Prokofieff, Schonberg, and maybe we were a little influenced by them." Many followers take a strong interest in abstract painting and psycho-analysis. In Paris, bebop has 0 taken up by the existentialists. ae a Until a few years ago practitioners of the new style had to play in private, because commercial band leaders would not have them in their bands, and the general jazz public took a dislike to their musics Perhaps that is a reason why beboppers occasionally describe (continued on next page) 6

themselves as progressives and their opponents as reactionaries. "How can they play that square stuff?" they ask. They call themselves the left wing of jazz and their opponents the right wing. By the same token they claim to have had a liberating influence on jazz. A drummer explained that "in bebop each beat is given an equal value, and that liberates the melody. It also liberates the accents. The closest thing to it in regular jazz is what the drummer does when he has a break (an interpolation during which elaborate and free rhyth-| mic passages are improvised)." Counterpoints of Rhythm Actually bebop is hard to explain in musical terms, unless you have heard it, Here are a few sample descriptions: "Bebop is full of complicated chord and melodic subtleties." "It changes time from bar to bar like Stravinsky and Art Tatum, and sometimes "even changes the beat inside each bar." "It’s full of counterpoints of rhythm’ as _ well as melody. To some people it sounds off. key. There’s a terrific element of the unexpected." Richard Boyer, in a recent issue of the New Yorker, makes the position a little clearer. "The rhythm instruments-drums, bass, and piano," he says, "often attempt the complex figures that are being played by the brass, and the rhythm is at best oplique and merely implied. The music, difficult and sometimes called ‘head music’ to indicate that its appeal is to the intellect rather than to the emotions, is frequently loud, aggressive, and defiant." The high priest of bebop .is a Negro trumpeter named John Birks (Dizzy) Gillespie. Other famous practitioners are Charlie Parker’ (the Bird), Bud Powell (the Great), Thelonius Monk (the Monk), and Max Roach (the Roach). Gillespie was born in 1917 in South Carolina. His father was a bricklayer and the leader of the local band.. Young Dizzy had won prowess as a trumpeter by the time he ‘was 14, and later he studied musical theory and harmony at a Negro industrial school. As _ the popularity of bebop increased, so did his earning as a trumpeter, and in the past eight years he has earned about

20,000 dollars in royalties from his recordings. This year he expects to make about 25,000 dollars from recordings and performances. Dizzy Gillespie. is reputedly an unusual character, like his music. He will wear strange and exotic clothes. He often uses cant words like "weird" and "square" that have a special meaning within the cult. He apparently bursts into cackling laughter at the slightest provocation. But he is also a first-class trumpeter and a good band leader. In a poll conducted by a prominent jazz magazine in 1947 hg was voted the outstancing trumpeter of the year. Recently he and his band made a triumphal tour of France and Scandinavia. "Oopapada" The more fervent admire.’s ape Dizzy’s "beard" (a tuft of hair on the lower lip), his horn-rimmed spectacles, and _ his bebop cap-a floppy blue beret with a narrow brim. Some Negro beboppers like to pretend they are Arabs, They read translations of the Koran, study Arabic, and bow towards Mecca at sunset. Bebop classics include compositions with names like Groovin’ High, He Beeped When He Should Bopped, and Oopapada. Perhaps bebop is just a passirig phase, born of the post-war years. Perhaps it has come to stay. It is difficult to say, but its emergence seems to indicate at least that jazz is still an active musical form, capable of infinite changes and developments with the passing of time. LS