Ralph Ellison :: Music Literature Papers

Ralph EllisonBa-Bap. . .he hit the snare so hard and so clean-right with the bass player, and each of Elvin J whizzss four extremities went into motion. The piano played one of those wooden-headed McCoy Tyner chords with that deep thoughtful jazz sound that makes my body twitch ever so so slightly with momentary satisfaction and anticipation. A split-second descending right-hand(prenominal) run from the piano and Bshhh. . .Elvin let the symbol resonate and moved in with his deadly swinging crisp high hat cht, cht, cht, cht, just as the honkers stated the melody in unison a fourth apart.Then, with a punchy five- lower line the sax player began his solo. After that phrase he halt and waited-allowing a few bars to roll by as he felt the rhythm and absorbed the harmonies the piano player offered in receipt to his line. With his head bent down as if in prayer, he countered with a longer, smoother second phrase that elaborated on the first one but then confidently let his extend unr esolved note bang out over the audience. I felt my legs moving down the stairs me and my head bobbing slightly, and my jaw began to open and shut tightly as if to mouth the next phrase. As the solo progressed, I felt I had to keep going my breath, waiting for each of the horn players thoughts to finish before I could top a full breath. The phrases began to get faster and closer together until he was rapidly firing notes out of his horn, and there was increasingly less blank space to breathe. The notes came in clusters and bursts of creative energy. His ideas seemed to flow from deep within the realms of the unconscious until he seemed no longer to be in control of his thoughts.Yet, despite the fixedness of the notes and ideas, he was completely in control and fooled everyone by deftly winning his time-moving slowly out of the scale so subtly that the audience didnt even placard until five minutes later with sweat pooling on his forehead, he had interpreted his solo all the w ay outside of the music and continued displace his band further on and outer still. Elvin came crashing down on his rig playing fierce poly patterns that evolved into a rhythmic game of tag with the horn player that just got more and more intense until at last the horn player reached way up and seemed to pull a resound note out of the ceiling and scream out into the club, before physically bending that note back into the music.