By Norm Dixon
One of modern music's greatest innovators and best-loved characters, John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, 75, died quietly in his sleep on January 6. Playing his trademark tilted-bell trumpet, he became one of the most influential jazz trumpeters in history, rivalled only by Louis Armstrong and Miles Davis.
With a handful of other musicians — legends like Charlie Parker, Thelonius Monk, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke — Dizzy initiated and led the '40s "be bop" revolution that changed the face of jazz. These pioneers were joined by a younger generation of players steeped in the new idiom: Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Max Roach, Art Blakey.
Be bop unfolded in the midst of a radicalisation in the African American community. To achieve victory in the second world war, the United States allowed the participation of African Americans in mainstream society to an unprecedented degree.
But, as LeRoi Jones outlined in his classic book, Blues People — The Negro Experience in White America and the Music that Developed From It, "this only served to increase the sense of resentment Negroes felt at the inequities American life continued to impose on them. This was especially true of the young men who returned from the war after having risked their lives for this country, only to find that they were still treated like subhumans, that it was 'their country' so long as they remained 'in their places'."
In 1941, the US government was forced to outlaw discrimination by government contractors after a mass march on Washington was threatened. Riots broke out in many urban areas, the largest in Harlem in 1943. There was a growing movement to emphasise black pride and identity. But after the war, there was a concerted attempt to turn around the social gains blacks had made.
This radicalisation was also expressed in music. Big band swing had been thoroughly debased and commercialised by the recording industry. The once vibrant black swing bands were supplanted by bland pop bands led by high-profile white stars such as Glen Miller and Benny Goodman (with the notable exception of bands led by Duke Ellington and Count Basie). Swing was no longer expressive of the emotional life of young African Americans.
In the early '40s, young black musicians gathered in the small night clubs of Harlem. There they honed new style during interminable jam sessions. They experimented with small group configurations and tested new ideas in harmony, phrasing, dissonance and polyrhythms. They were determined to reclaim jazz as the music of the African American people. They were proud to be black. The music was polemical and iconoclastic yet sophisticated.
Diz and Bird were the be bop movement's chief oracles. Their nd recordings defined be bop.
Like today's hip hop culture, be boppers created a dissident subculture. They used their own "hep" jargon, they wore berets, goatees, zoot suits and dark horn-rimmed glasses — the '40s equivalents of today's baseball hats turned backward, flat-top haircuts and basketball boots. Young white non-conformists and radicals were also attracted to this new milieu's lifestyle.
Not content with his role in inventing be bop, Gillespie launched yet another musical rebellion by injecting Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian rhythms into modern jazz. His big band of the late '40s featured the great Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo. Famous tunes such as "A Night in Tunisia", "Cubana Be Cubana Bop", "Tin Tin deo" and "Manteca" were the result.
For the next four decades, Gillespie's mixing of be bop and Afro-Latin fusions was central to his reputation. His love of Cuban music led him to visit Cuba on many occasions despite the US government's attempts to quarantine the rebel island. He got to know Fidel Castro well. Castro appeared with Gillespie in a 1988 documentary, A Night in Havana.
At the time of his death, Gillespie headed the United Nation Orchestra, a 15-member ensemble that features Cuban exiles Arturo Sandoval and Paquito D'Riveria, as well as musicians from Brazil, Panama, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.
Diplomatic recognition of Cuba was a major plank in Dizzy's 1964 campaign to be elected president of the United States. Though tongue-in-cheek, the campaign addressed some serious issues. Dizzy argued for recognition of China, total withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam and combating racial discrimination.
His proposed cabinet included Charles Mingus as minister for peace and Max Roach as minister of defence — both well known black radical jazz artists — and Malcolm X as minister for justice! He also nominated Miles Davis as head of the CIA and Duke Ellington as minister of foreign affairs.
In his last 20 years, Dizzy was an adherent of the Bahai faith which, he said, is dedicated to the spiritual unity of humanity and advocates world peace and education.
Dizzy remained firm in many of his views, especially those on racism. In 1990 he starred in, and wrote the music for, a European thriller called The Winter in Lisbon. Gillespie plays an expatriate African American trumpet player who forms a bond with a young pianist.
One of the film's most dramatic scenes is when Dizzy's character talks about why he left the US, about racism and drugs. He says that people don't understand the pressure that killed Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday. None of that dialogue was scripted: it was ad libbed from the heart.