Bird’s birthday – 29th August

Bird’s birthday 29th August

Hello Thrillseekers,

Saturday 27th August’s program highlights the contribution of Charlie Parker to the continuum of jazz. You can’t possibly understand modern jazz without knowing Bird’s music…by heart!

His contributions were truly revolutionary. At the time the (white) music industry, including musicians regularly misappropriated songs, arrangements and improvisations with impunity. Bird substituted notes in a chord to make it harder for musicians outside of the bebop ‘inner circle’ to hear. He also took the easy-sounding 4/4 of Swing and increased it to 8/4 (doubling the time) and sometimes even 16/4. The song was also given a new name! It would take the industry about a decade to understand the new music. It certainly was a way to ‘claw back’ some money. Unfortunately the FBI-promoted drug distribution to keep revolutionary-inclined returning black troops to keep their minds off their unchanged life of enslaved poverty.

Several generations of highly-influential black musicians had shortened careers like Bird and Bud Powell, (nearly) Coltrane in the next generation were victims.

Tune in to hear how he did it and to hopefully get you hooked on nothing more dangerous than jazz.