To Be, or Not …To Bop: Black Existential Reality
and the Formation of a Bebop Figure

By the 1940s, a cadre of young black American musicians—the stellar list includes Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk—set in motion a paradigm shift that challenged American culture’s social and musical inequality.  The bebop musical revolution was characterized by innovative and improvisational moves as black American and Afro-Cuban creative artists produced a new, intense, and rebellious sound that reverberated throughout American society. 

"A man can speak of the “heresy of bebop” for instance, only if he is completely unaware of the psychological catalysts that made that music the exact registration of the social and cultural thinking of a whole generation of black Americans.  The blues and jazz aesthetic, to be fully understood, must be seen in as nearly its complete human context as possible.  People made bebop.  The question the critic must ask is: why?  But it is just this why of the [black American] music that has been consistently ignored or misunderstood; and it is a question that cannot be adequately answered without first understanding the necessity of asking it.  Contemporary jazz during the last few years has begun to take on again some of the anarchy and excitement of the bebop years."  (Amiri Baraka [LeRoi Jones], Black Music)

Listen to each of following audio selections and write down your impressions (anything at all). In class, we will discuss your impressions (e.g, different instruments, rhythms, emotions, etc).

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