Round About Monk - Reflections

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Mad Monk and Monk Madness (1) - part one
© Jacques Ponzio
translation from the original French © 2003 Mark Baldwin Harris

All ways know, always night, all ways
know - and dig the way I say all ways (2)

Thus rings one of the most penetrating quotes we have from what I would call the collected teachings of Thelonious Sphere Monk. To speak of "teachings" with regard to the corpus of aphoristic asides ascribed to Monk is, admittedly, a choice of terms to which he himself would have not have taken kindly; to Monk’s mind, from the outset –Minton’s jazz club in 1941– his famous quips were, all along, simply a part of plying his trade as a musician, and he had this to say on the subject, in an interview conducted by Down Beat magazine in 1956 : "I was just playing a gig, tryin’ to play music… (musicians were) just in there playin’; they weren’t giving any lectures." (3)

Nevertheless, this paper attempts to take to heart the Monkian appeal for "necessary knowledge". Oftentimes, what one learns –whatever form this instruction may take– depends neither on the mindset nor the will of the teacher. As we are reminded by Lacan : "…human desire -incessantly poked at, anesthetized, stultified by moralists, domesticated by educators, betrayed by academics– has, quite simply, been driven to find refuge in that passion which is the most subtle, while, at the same time, the blindest (as the tale of Oedipus teaches us) : the passion, the yearning, the thirst for knowledge. And that is, indeed, a gathering force which has yet to say the last word!" (4)

•••

Many members of the general public had their first glimpse of what Monk was really all about at the cinema. I was one of them, and well recall being thunderstruck by the originality of the musical expression of this unknown musician seemingly unfettered by

any of the classical canons of pianistic art which informed the common criteria of the day. It was in 1964 that I first sat witnessing close-ups –the film was "Jazz on a Summer’s Day" (5), the tune "Blue Monk", intercut with views of boat racing at Newport– of a highly innovative pianist flailing at the keyboard with the grace and resolve of an Olympic swimmer doing the butterfly stroke. The film’s poster reflected the tastes of its day, with its promise of a romantic love story underpinned by music, a story, of course, completely absent in the documentary, at

least in the form suggested by the advertisement… the real love story was that born between the music and viewers, or, to put it better, between the musicians and such viewers as myself. From that day on, there was no turning back; how could one possibly avoid being "Monkian".

The reader will, quite justifiably, be wondering at this point what is meant by "being Monkian". Lacan’s wry comment to his followers comes to mind: "If you want to be Lacanians, that’s your business; I’m a Freudian, myself". To be Monkian, in 1964, meant listening to music, Monk’s music, more and more of it, over and over again, and reading the few articles and reviews available in the music press of the time; no books would be published until 1988, when Yves Buin’s monograph (6) first came out. Alone, thus, with a small pile of records and, perhaps, an instrument, one could but attempt a solo full immersion course to make sense of this musical language.

To actually play any Monk tunes meant, for years, dissecting them personally, as the only readily available "transcriptions" were the dubious (when not wildly inaccurate) sketches in the lazy jazz buff’s aptly named "fake books". Do-it-yourself was the only serious alternative. Common sense -always wary of the all too human wane of interest we experience in the face of prolonged frustration– sounded its clarion call : pin down the melodies and changes before boredom sets in! But, suddenly, the situation was further complicated by the discrepancies in each tunes’ numerous recorded versions; which one should we choose (reason, "common sense", told us that we couldn’t transcribe all of them!!)? In a flash, we are drawn into a fiendish cycle: which is the "best" version of this number? Is it that solo rendition, that trio setting, that quartet take, or that big band track?

And so, inexorably, all in the name of Reason, you proceed from example to specimen; for each title, a representative specimen is decided upon for each category, from solo piano to big band settings. Once this threshold has been crossed, the Mephistophelian pact with is sealed, and, before long. you realize that you have sold your soul to the Devil in return for the chance to track down, buy, or otherwise lay your hands on the tiniest lost morsel, the shortest of forgotten false starts, on dusty reels abandoned on shadowy shelves just begging to be heard…

So, suddenly, you’re a collector, but not of the usual garden variety, not one of those types that sleep clutching their hoard, fearful that someone will snatch it away at any moment… If, as Proudhon (7) declared, property is theft, then the essence of property is the theft of others’ personal freedom, of the community’s potentiality. Consequently, what better solution, to protect ourselves from inevitable devastation at the hands of a lone madman, than to transform private property into collective property? You become… a collective collector!

But, no, dear reader, our adventure cannot be reduced to a mere collector’s obsession, however thrilling (or banal) that might be; Monk’s music, beautiful, innovative and complex as it is, is not in itself enough to justify a similar excess. What we required was the intervention of that same fathomless

wellspring of feeling -dark on the surface but, once stirred, suddenly glistening with brilliance- that this prodigiously creative and equally enigmatic, certainly exceptional personality had so deeply imbibed in order to give birth to his oeuvre. Our certitude rapidly saw the light of day: here was not another "riff-smith", another clever instrumentalist stuffing song-structures like a Chicago cannery-hand down by the abattoirs, but a being wholly absorbed in and transfigured by his creations.

The complete Monk opus consists of some seventy compositions, not a particularly copious output when compared to the productivity of many of Monk’s contemporaries, prolific composers of the calibre of Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus. However, these seventy-odd little pieces are of such profound richness that they will surely continue to award repeat visits, invite new interpretations and inspire fresh approaches for a long, long time. Today, hearing Monk’s inventions rendered on exotic and unusual instruments is no rarity; Miya Masaoka’s koto, the Laotian khene and Chinese dulcimer of the Asian-American Orchestra, Steve Lacy’s solo soprano saxophone… It is the rich consistency of Monk’s work, whatever the treatment, that has always fascinated me.

During my years of research for my book (8), I garnered a veritable cornucopia of firsthand documentation. Coming back to this material, some time after the study was published, further patient reexamination led me to make a new discovery. It concerned the birth certificates of Thelonious, his sister and his brother. To summon up the facts :
- Marion Barbara, born January 18th, 1916
- Thelonious Junior, born October 10th, 1917
- Thomas William, born January 11th, 1920

Nothing earthshattering, so far… but close scrutiny of these records revealed something previously unnoticed, there in black and white on the lines registering the number of children born to mother Barbara :
- for Marion Barbara : 2 (already putting me on guard)
- for Thelonious Junior : 2
- for Thomas William : 4

and the number of children living :
- for Marion Barbara : 1
- for Thelonious Junior : 2
- for Thomas William : 3

marion :

thelonious :

thomas :

My conclusion, at this stage, was that Marion and her brothers’ parents had had another child, who passed away before Marion was born and was never thereafter even hinted at (in public, at least). When he was born, Thelonious automatically became the first living son in the family, whence his name, Thelonious Junior. The hunch that the deceased infant had been a boy, and that his parents transferred to Thelonious all of the hopes, ideals and ambitions dashed by their first-born’s untimely passing, necessitated no great leap of the imagination. For the moment, we have no direct confirmation of this conjecture, but I would add to the dossier what all sources testify to, and that is Thelonious’ mother Barbara’s dogged determination that he follow his dreams and lead his life wherever "his heart was bent on going"; from the very outset, she was his greatest supporter. "My mother never figured I should do anything else. She was with me. If I wanted to play music, it was all right with her", he confided to Valerie Wilmer in 1965. (9)
____________________
© 2003 Jacques Ponzio
this translation from the original French © 2003 Mark Baldwin Harris
________________________________________________________
(1) The first draft of this paper was delivered in Italian -on the 16th of February, 2002, in Prato, during the symposium "Reflections on Monk"- on the invitation of Stefano Zenni and the staff of Metastasio Jazz 2002. As presented here, it has benefited from the questions posed by conference participants.
(2) Barry Farrell, cover story, Time magazine, Feb. 28, 1964.
(3) Nat Hentoff, Just call him Thelonious, Down Beat magazine, July 25, 1956.
(4) Jacques Lacan, l'Ethique de la psychanalyse, Seuil, Paris, 1986. This excerpt was written in 1959-1960. The other quote from Lacan is from his opening address to the first Rencontre internationale du Champ freudien, held in Caracas on July 12th, 1980, originally published in L’ Âne magazine, no.1, March-April, 1981.
(5) Jazz on a Summer’s Day, produced by Bert Stern, Raven Films, 1959. The film documents the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. French title : Jazz à Newport.
(6) Yves Buin, Thelonious Monk, P.O.L. éditeur, Paris, 1988. Long out of print, a new edition of this book is available since 2002.
(7) Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Qu'est-ce que la propriété? Recherche sur le principe du droit et du gouvernement. Premier mémoire, 1840.
(8) Jacques Ponzio & François Postif, Blue Monk, Actes Sud, Paris, 1995.
(9) Valerie Wilmer, Monk on Monk, Down Beat, June 3, 1965.

to be continued…

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functional • what now • thelonious • criss cross
reflections • epistrophy • well you needn't
we see • introspection • monk's mood
monk's point • ask me now • humph • children song • work
evidence • oska T • let's call this • four in one
think of one • chordi@lly

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