Thelonious came fast to the audience: he accompanied the church choir of the local Baptist community, in which also his mother sang. He also earned his first tracks as a dance musician at parties. In the meantime he became interested in the jazz even further. When Thelonious about ten years old, his family got from a good friend a piano as a gift, and his older sister Marion got since that time keyboard instruction. The small Thelonious watched as his sister regularly practiced and he learned it pretty fast read notes. Monk later said even that he learn to play piano has only to look over the shoulder. This watch and observe he found not enough in the long term, especially because he was fascinated by the instrument. Therefore he began to learn to play piano himself. At the age of 11 he got piano lessons for the first time correct and according to Monks said he began immediately thereafter to interest in jazz. Unlike many other families respected the family Monk the musical ambitions of their youngest shoot. In fact, Monks always supported him and allowed him to mother. is an original thinker who can push the still-nascent field of jazz studies into new arenas and dimensions, and Monk's Music a solid work of scholarship.” - Jazzhothouse Blog “An ambitious work that combines biography, cultural theory and musical analysis to examine not only Monk, his life and work, but the jazz canon itself.Came on 10 October 1917 Thelonious Monk (also called Sphere ) in the world in Rocky Mount in North Carolina, in the United States of America. He spent his childhood and his youth in New York, where his family from 1923 stayed at the black quarter of Juan Hill. Especially in this neighborhood, there was always an active music scene.This will have contributed that Thelonious Monk music at this resort is his whole life. Somoroff Ethnomusicology “Solis is masterful in his analysis. Dietrich Choice “A well-thought-out, original work that makes a strong contribution to jazz ethnography.” - Downbeat “Solis reaches well beyond the usual life-and-times biography to address larger issues in the unfolding of jazz as an art-ethnography and the role of memory in history's construction.” - Ejazznews “This book will be an important reading for scholars of jazz, American music more generally, and African American Studies, while it should also prove of interest for ethnomusicologists.” -Matthew A. innovative methodology.” - Arsc Journal “This book offers important observations and ideas. Reviews “Solis’s viewpoints are advanced by excellent writing and argued very competently. He looks at the ways musical lineages are created in the jazz world and, in the process, addresses the question of how musicians use performance itself to maintain, interpret, and debate the history of the musical tradition we call jazz. He considers how Monk's stature has grown, from the narrowly focused wing of the avant-garde in the 1960s and '70s to the present, where he is claimed as an influence by musicians of all kinds. Solis reaches well beyond the usual life-and-times biography to address larger issues in jazz scholarship-ethnography and the role of memory in history's construction.
Gabriel Solis shows how the work of this stubbornly nonconformist composer emerged from the jazz world's fringes to find a central place in its canon. This pathbreaking study combines cultural theory, biography, and musical analysis to shed new light on Monk's music and on the jazz canon itself. As a composer, pianist, and bandleader, Monk both extended the piano tradition known as Harlem stride and was at the center of modern jazz's creation during the 1940s, setting the stage for the experimentalism of the 1960s and '70s. Thelonious Monk (1917-1982) was one of jazz's greatest and most enigmatic figures.