Essays on Thelonious Monk

Bebop is a jazz style known for fast paces and complex improvisations based on playing off of harmonies. It developed in the 1940s in the United States of America and symbolized the new stage in the ideas about jazz music and its perception. This paper aims to discuss the history of bebop, its establishment as the major modern jazz movement around the days of the decline of big bands, its fragmentation into the styles of cool and hard bop, and the role African-American musicians played in its development. As Gioia writes, from its beginning, jazz was the genre of ...

Thelonious Monk is known as one of the most gifted jazz musicians. He was the pioneer of bebop and his influence as a pianist and composer had significant effects on different kinds of music (Monkinstitute). Music of Thelonious Monk is based on Ingrid Monson’s and Paul Berliner’s work (Solis 3). Nevertheless, Monk is famous for his improvisations, which are so outstanding that a jazz critic Whitney Balliett once pointed out “His improvisations were molten Monk compositions, and his compositions were frozen Monk improvisations.” (Deveaux 169) Thelonious was born in North Carolina on October 10, 1917, but his ...

Music could be one of the greatest inventions that happened in our history. It is a form of art and a form of cultural activity which is created out of various elements such as pitch, rhythm, dynamics, and even the audible qualities of texture and timbre. There are many types of music that were created that may have started in the early days. One of which is the Jazz music. This type of music represents a perfect combination of music components and elements in order to create an audible sound that many people have been enjoying since the early ...