Bebop Jazz
Bebop Jazz and The Beat Poets
A throbbing pulsation of a drum with rapid, short strokes, a plucking sound form a string instrument, and a couple of lively voices come together to create rhythm and harmony, all while building a statement. An enormous crowd of dark bodies move to the beat of the harmonious sounds, some tenderly swaying, others aggressively thumping their feet. This scene is familiar to the nineteenth-century in New Orleans. Notorious architect, Benjamin Latrobe, had witnessed such a scene on February 21, 1819, and left behind sketches of the instruments used. The used percussion and string instruments were mirrored to those used in indigenous African music. Although Jazz can sound informal and spontaneous, with an open …show more content…
He played an important role in the Black Arts Movement of Harlem in the 1960s. The poet was born Everett LeRoi Jones in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey. He was glorified for speaking out against oppression. Believing that a poem’s form should follow the shape determined by the poet’s own breath, Baraka utilized jazz to translate one African American expressive form into another. Although seemingly chaotic with no constant harmonic structure, Bebop Jazz still flows to the familiar sound of black music. The music is rooted in the African American past, saturated with the history of its people. In essence, the music is a way into African American history, and into identity through sound and form. Baraka admired the black voice that Bebop Jazz inquired and incorporated it into his works. He says that the music “reinforces the most valuable memories of a people but at the same time creates new forms, new modes of expression, to more precisely reflect contemporary experience” (Black Music 267). Reflecting on his past, Baraka casts off the “white sound” and “white voice” to achieve a black self and sound. Although a “colored bohemian liberal living on the Lower East side in heaven”, Baraka refuses to “sound like that” (Autobiography 278). His goal was to sound authentic, to sound like where he came from. Jazz connected Baraka’s past to his art and provided a style that was not familiar to the white world. It had created a cultural connection because it contains the “black voice”. Ethnic awareness played an important role in this poets art. His piece Raise Race is a scream that is wild and free, like the form of Bebop Jazz. Jazz has enabled Baraka to develop an African American voice and allowed access to a new expressive
A throbbing pulsation of a drum with rapid, short strokes, a plucking sound form a string instrument, and a couple of lively voices come together to create rhythm and harmony, all while building a statement. An enormous crowd of dark bodies move to the beat of the harmonious sounds, some tenderly swaying, others aggressively thumping their feet. This scene is familiar to the nineteenth-century in New Orleans. Notorious architect, Benjamin Latrobe, had witnessed such a scene on February 21, 1819, and left behind sketches of the instruments used. The used percussion and string instruments were mirrored to those used in indigenous African music. Although Jazz can sound informal and spontaneous, with an open …show more content…
He played an important role in the Black Arts Movement of Harlem in the 1960s. The poet was born Everett LeRoi Jones in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey. He was glorified for speaking out against oppression. Believing that a poem’s form should follow the shape determined by the poet’s own breath, Baraka utilized jazz to translate one African American expressive form into another. Although seemingly chaotic with no constant harmonic structure, Bebop Jazz still flows to the familiar sound of black music. The music is rooted in the African American past, saturated with the history of its people. In essence, the music is a way into African American history, and into identity through sound and form. Baraka admired the black voice that Bebop Jazz inquired and incorporated it into his works. He says that the music “reinforces the most valuable memories of a people but at the same time creates new forms, new modes of expression, to more precisely reflect contemporary experience” (Black Music 267). Reflecting on his past, Baraka casts off the “white sound” and “white voice” to achieve a black self and sound. Although a “colored bohemian liberal living on the Lower East side in heaven”, Baraka refuses to “sound like that” (Autobiography 278). His goal was to sound authentic, to sound like where he came from. Jazz connected Baraka’s past to his art and provided a style that was not familiar to the white world. It had created a cultural connection because it contains the “black voice”. Ethnic awareness played an important role in this poets art. His piece Raise Race is a scream that is wild and free, like the form of Bebop Jazz. Jazz has enabled Baraka to develop an African American voice and allowed access to a new expressive