Jazz for aficionados

*****  this is some of the most "inside" stuff they've done*****

Que Significa Esto?

Cheers

****Who can name the tune that Joe Henderson quotes at the very start of his solo at :45? Hint: Cuba****

https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLLhORrvwD4q8PiN2bIn5cbuaHiomigktt&params=OAFIAVgF&v=nC0zxx...

Since there were no takers, the answer is:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0oWhz0G4-Tg

The melody starts at :11. "Siboney" is, along with "Guantanamera", one of the tunes most associated with Cuban music. It’s title refers to the name of the island’s native Indiians. Beautiful melody.

What would give a great jazz player like Joe Henderson the idea to quote a tune so seemingly removed from the jazz lexicon? The answer shows the vastness of the musical reservoir and intellect of the great jazz players; and gives great insight into the creative process involved in the creation of a cogent jazz solo. Why this tune? For anyone interested in this sort of thing (you can stop reading now O-10 😉):

Hargrove’s tune starts with a simple minor chord in the key of C; three notes, C, E flat, G. The first three notes of the "Siboney" melody are precisely those three notes, C, Eb, G. Henderson then uses that little musical kernel to develop his entire solo. He takes that little musical idea and uses its basic shape and goes off in many different directions, but comes back to it in an obvious way at various points in the solo to sort of "ground" it to the original idea. He does this at 1:22. This time, he morphs that musical kernel into a quote of a tune with a similar shape, Ellington’s "I Don’t Mean A Thing....." (gotta love it!). He goes off again and makes one final obvious reference to it at 2:02 and ends the solo.

All this may sound to some like a lot of intellectual gobbly-goop. It should serve, at least, to show just how much is going on in the minds of the jazz greats; they are artistic and intellectual giants. Importantly, wether we are able to recognize what is going on or not, this is one of the reasons that some players hold our attention and some don’t; why we like some and not others. Those we don’t like as much tend to be the ones who, even with impressive technical skill, don’t have the ability to apply this kind of logic to their improvisation and just play a lot of unrelated licks. Like the old timers like to say: "They ain’t sayin shit".

"INSIDE": conventional, traditional, tonal, "inside the harmony"

"OUTSIDE": outside conventional harmony, atonal, avantgarde, "noisemaker" 😉

Of course, I meant to write "It Don't Mean A Thing..."  not, "I Don't Mean A Thing....".  The jokes can start flying now ☺️

There sure is a lot of "quoting" going on in Jazz.

Thanks for the insight.

Cheers