GRGR(4) Cherokee

[s~Z]

On the shoulders of giants:

Date:   Tue, 19 Nov 1996 13:55:22 -0500
To:     pynchon-l at waste.org
From:   Michael Arnowitt <arnowitt at sover.net>
Subject: - Cherokee and bebop

10) Cherokee and Charlie Parker? (63.22-64.7) Ok, anyone want to go
    into Charlie Parker's history and the development of bebop? Ditto
    for how bebop takes an existing song and transforms it (I have
    been told that it is something to do with transposing but changing
    the harmonic relations at the same time - does this mean it
    actually falls into line as a transform along the lines of thsoe
    used by the serial composers i.e. a perm of the scale?). A bebop
    buff of my acquaintance (who has been a jazz freak since the days
    of Berlin's US forces radio in the 50s) tells me that Cherokee is
    a classic example of a bebop anthem. Parker had to use well-known
    tunes like Cherokee since what he did was so wild that the band
    could only follow if they knew how to play the number blindfold.
    It also fits this scene because it invokes cowboy and indian
    memories for Slothrop.

I doubt that bebop jazz improvisers used serial transformations
(inversion,
retrograde, and retrograde inversion) as classical composers do ... but
now
that you mention it, the notes of the tune "Cherokee" itself start out
as a
little palindrome:

D - F - G - B flat - G - F - D

So notes 4 through 7 are a retrograde of notes 1 through 4.  Serial
composers like Anton Webern (one of Schoenberg's students) loved these
sorts
of mirrors in their themes.

In fact, the rise and fall of the theme could remind one of the shape of
a
rocket:

   Bb
 FG  GF
D      D

(kind of an A-shape...)

I have only heard "Cherokee" as an instrumental improv, never sung. 
Does
anyone know the words?  I always imagined it was called Cherokee because
the
beginning of the tune, quoted above, uses a pentatonic (simple 5-note)
scale
stereotypically thought to be characteristic of tribal music ... 

Of course, Charlie Parker's improvising is anything but pentatonic, as
Pynchon mentions.  The contrast between the simple fake-Indian
pentatonic
theme in basic whole notes and Bird's inspired and advanced torrent o'
notes
is indeed striking.

I'm quite new to the list and have been especially enjoying the GRGR. 
As a
classical pianist I'm used to the slow, deliberate examination of a text
...
"God is in the details," and all that.  Anyway, good to be on board --
have
been doing my share of "floundering in the channel" myself recently ...

Michael

********************************************************************************

Plenty of folks have weighed in on "Cherokee," its structure and the
fact that
it is one legendary leaping off point for the harmonic revolution in
jazz that
was bebop.  I think I can add a few points but, more importantly, note
how this
jazz reference links in to some of the other vital concerns of the book.

The story of how Parker used Cherokee for experimenting with new
harmonies in
jazz was made famous by that Downbeat article and by a book of
interviews (cited
by Weisenberger in the Companion, I think).  Here's how I would explain
it: 
"swing" style jazz allowed musicians to improvise over the existing
harmony of
songs, often standard "pop" songs.  While the swing musicians applied
blues
harmony concepts to these songs, the melodic choices the improvisers had
were
relatively limited.  Parker (and Gillespie and Monk and others) were
seeking
greater freedom as improvisers, but they weren't just wild men, seeking
to  honk
and squeak with utter abondon; they were hearing a musical logic that
would
allow them to improvise more freely within a new structure.  Parker took
the
chords to Cherokee and "extended them upward from the root (the 1) past
the
usual extend of chords (the seventh tone) to the ninth, thirteenth,
etc.,
building these brand new chords from which new melodic choices were
possible. 
These new chords were then a "reharmonization" of the original tune.
Then,
Parker would improvise (or write) a brand new melody to go with the new
hormony
(or vice versa) and have a new tune based on the structure of the
original. 
"Koko" was based on "Cherokee" in that way.

It's the racial and political implications of this that fascinate
Pynchon most,
though (though his Slothrop is another musical seeker, chasing that
Blues harp
down the toilet, finally learning how to bend those blues tones by the
end). 
The history of swing was, needless to say, one of considerable
exploitation.  As
fast as black jazz musicians could create jazz in the teens and 20's and
30's,
white bandleaders were there to cash in.  From Paul Whiteman to Glenn
Miller to
the Dorseys, the bold sounds of Fletcher Henderson and Don Redman and
Duke and
dozens of others were watered down and sold to the American public in
blanched
form.  It's said that part of what the boppers were doing was not only
breaking
out of the harmonic and rhythmic confines of swing but also creating a
music so
complex that the pretenders couldn't understand it and then steal it.

When Louis Armstrong -- the first great jazz improviser to make records
-- first
heard bebop, he disliked it and referred to it as "Chinese music," a
derogatory
reference that plays into the history of racism that can't really be
separated
from jazz.  And so Pynchon is all over it, not only noting the irony
that
"Cherokee" (with those patronizing lyrics) was the vehicle for Parker's
revolutionary act, but linking "Cherokee" to the exploitation of blacks
through
"Red" -- the young Malcolm X's nickname due to his hair color.

I've always felt that Pynchon's allusions to Parker and jazz here are
one way of
seeing some unsentimental optimism in GR.  Bird finds a way of turning
white
exploitation of jazz on its head by expanding possibilities rather than
limiting
them.  He "steals back" jazz by taking a dopey pop song and making it
into
sophisticated art on his own terms.  Moreoever, he's one model for
Slothrop and
his searching disappearance.  After Parker died at the age of 34 in
1955, the
"rumor" and graffitti "Bird Lives" were all over NY, and the myth was
that he
was appearing, ghost-like, at concerts and in clubs, inhabiting the body
of
every decent alto sax player to come along for a decade or more -- not
unlike
the shadow appearances of Slothrop at the end of the book in liner
notes, etc.

-- Will Layman