Category Archives: Literature

I have recently finished reading The Sultan’s Shadow: One Family’s Rule at the Crossroads of East and West by Christiane Bird and Geoff Dyer’s ode to Jazz, But Beautiful. The Sultan’s Shadow was slow at the beginning, often with great emphasis placed on things that had little interest to me (like the details of the Sultan’s palaces in Zanzibar), but overall was a compelling read about a time and place in history that I know almost nothing about: Eighteen Century Zanzibar and East Africa, Omani control over the region and the entrance of European Colonialism, the East African slave and ivory trades, and the British fascination with locating the source of the Nile.

But Beautiful was more of a mix bag. At times, I felt that Dyer was simply trying too hard or that his fictionalized vignettes of the historic accounts of famous Jazz musicians did not always add to a greater understanding of musicians or their craft. For example, the story related to Thelonious Monk reads identical to the Straight No Chaser documentary. On the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed the portrayals of the Lester Young and Charles Mingus. If there was an overall theme it was that the the underlying tragedy of the Jazz musician — beyond even that of racial oppression — was addiction, vitally affecting each character and, instead of enhancing their performance, ultimately inhibiting it (maybe with the sole exception of Mingus whose addiction and principle personality trait was to devour everything in his path). Finally, although I did not particularly enjoy the piece on Chet Baker (mainly influenced by the haunting Let’s Get Lost documentary), I found Dyer’s analysis of Baker’s aesthetic as a sign of his inability to express either beauty or compassion as quite interesting.

And now – due mainly to the fact that for a number of personal reasons I am in a rush to read as much as possible by the end of the year – I have continued to add new books to my list. Like an insensitive ex, I have shamelessly moved on. I have already started David Mitchell’s new The Thousand Autumns of Jacob Zoet, about the Dutch trading post at Dejima, Japan at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. As always with Mitchell, the beginning is slow as I adjust to whatever vernacular he has created for his story, and then it picks up very quickly. New on my roster are:

• Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje
• The Crusades: the War for the Holy Land by Thomas Asbridge
• Bob Marley: The Untold Story by Chris Salewicz
• King Leopold’s Ghost: A story of greed, terror and heroism by Adam Horchschild
• The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengetsu
• Abu Musa’s Women Neighbors: A Historical Novel from Morocco by Ahmed Toufiq
• Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin.

These, of course, fighting on deck with the books I have yet to get to from the previous lists.

For most of 2009, I was a very good boy. Instead of buying new music, I did my best to recycle from the fairly vast collection that I already had – because, of course, the more music you have, the less of it you can enjoy.

And then my frugal trend suddenly took a turn for the worse. Over the last few days, I have been totally engrossed in Robin D.G. Kelly’s new book, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. What a fantastic read, especially if you are a Jazz fan. The problem is that the book inspired me to fill in some of the gaps in my Monk collection, picking up

• The Unique Thelonious Monk
• Mulligan Meets Monk
• Thelonious Alone in San Francisco
• Big Band and Quartet
• Criss-Cross

Revisiting some already in my collection, particulary,

• The Best of the Blue Note Years
  
• Brilliant Corners
• Monk’s Music
  
• The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall
• Monk’s Dream
  
• Straight No Chaser

And also getting my hands on a few rare gems by other Monk contemporaries:

• Cootie Williams: 1941-1944 (with some of the first ever recordings of Monk compositions “Fly Right (Epistophy)” and “Round Midnight”, and with Bud Powell on piano).
• Sahib Shihab: Jazz Sahib (with Bill Evans on piano)
• Abbey Lincoln: Straight Ahead (with Coleman Hawkins, Eric Dolphy, Booker Little, Mal Waldron, and Max Roach)
• Pepper Adams: 10 to 4 at the Five Spot (with Donald Bird, Doug Watkins, Elvin Jones, and Bobby Timmons).

Some critics of Kelly’s work complain about inclusion of African American-centric political commentary, of which I assume they mean references to slavery and the racial violence and discrimination that occurred during Monk’s life. But it would be hard to tell the story of a Twentieth Century African American – one whose great-grandparents and grandparents had been born into slavery and, like his fellow black Jazz contemporaries had difficulty traveling freely in certain states and were often harassed by the police – and not recognize that these factors essentially shaped their lives. Ignoring them is a denial of the American experience.

In any event, the book is thoroughly enjoyable and sheds light on Monk as a family man and homebody, a generous teacher – and not the eccentric hermit he was made out to be – but someone fully focused, dedicated and unwavering in the pursuit of his own unadulterated artistic identity. Monk never changed his style, not when he was being laughed at, not when he finally achieved recognition twenty years later, and certainly not thereafter.