A night in Tunisia
A Night in Tunisia is a jazz standard written by Dizzy Gillespie in 1942 while he was a member of Earl Hines' band .
composition
The core of the composition is kept in the AABA scheme and comprises 32 bars; it also contains a fully composed interlude of 16 bars. It is played at a medium to fast tempo. The title alludes to the “exotic” characteristics of the piece: the A parts in particular use musical means whose associative content was already familiar to the American audience of the 1940s as “oriental”. Melodies formed from the harmonic minor scale are accordingly connoted to this day, and the borrowings from Afro-Cuban music , as they are evident in the accompaniment, especially the bass figure, were only generally perceived as "strange" by the general public.
While the entire A section is underlaid with the bass line shown, it varies a two-bar phrase three times and ends with a fourth. The harmony scheme is simple: a tritone swapped authentic ending in minor (IIb7 - Im6 corresponding to Eb7 - Dm6) every two bars. The bridge (the B part) uses a cadence that is very popular in bebop , which first modulates into the subdominant of the main key D minor (i.e. after G minor ) and then in its major parallel ( i.e. F major ) .
Another integral part of Gillespie's composition is the interlude following the last A section . This brings a riff-like melody over another cadenza in the major parallel, but the composer uses accompanying harmonies at this point, which, due to their timbres and chromatic movements, were even more abstract than the similarly conceived middle section. The interlude ends on a break , which - depending on the interpretation - can be two or four bars long and should be used by the soloist as an introduction to his chorus . Special recognition attained a virtuoso melodic line about this place that Charlie Parker on one (as a whole from the producers rejected) Take grossed and later under the title Famous Alto Break has been published separately.
The piece was first conceived as an instrumental number, the first big band - Arrangement of Night in Tunisia took the composer with the band of Boyd Raeburn on. The number was later provided with a text (by Leo Robin) and played under the title "Interlude"; under this title it was recorded among others by Sarah Vaughan on December 31, 1944 (accompanied by Parker and Gillespie). Gillespie himself always called it "A Night in Tunisia"; his first recording of the song under his name was made in February 1946 with Milt Jackson , who developed an additional riff.
background
“A Night in Tunisia” was (together with “Manteca”) the signature tune of Gillespie's Bebop - Big Band . One of the most famous interpretations comes from Charlie Parker, recorded for the record label Dial , during this recording session the aforementioned Famous Alto Break was created .
On the album A Night At Birdland, Volume 1 , Art Blakey annotated the title with a fictional story in which he was allegedly present when Gillespie composed the piece on the bottom of a garbage can. Gillespie himself writes in his autobiography that through improvisations on the piano he came across a melody with a “latin / oriental feeling”, which inevitably resulted in a rhythm deviation from the four beat, which was first pronounced around 1945 when Latin American rhythms flowed into the bebop in Manteca , style-defining. Frank Paparelli is stated as the author in the credits ; according to Gillespie, he was only responsible for the transcription.
Reception and other recordings
Anita O'Day recorded another vocal version worth listening to in 1958. Manhattan Transfer recorded a different vocal version on their album Vocalise in 1985 (together with Bobby McFerrin ) . The text they used came from Jon Hendricks , who, based on Charlie Parker's solo, wrote his text for the melody and recorded it with his trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross in 1962. Ella Fitzgerald also used his text. Chaka Khan wrote another text for the song. There are also French, Dutch and Arabic lyrics.
The composition enjoyed “cult status” among the Beboppers from the start ( Hans-Jürgen Schaal ). Lennie Tristano also recorded the piece in 1946. It has become a jazz standard and a popular jam session number over time. In 1960 he was the title track of the Jazz Messengers album A Night in Tunisia . It has been covered by many artists in different styles, e.g. B. by Bud Powell (1951), the Lighthouse All Stars (1954), Stan Getz (1955), Miles Davis (1955), but also by Count Basie , Maynard Ferguson , Herbie Mann , Sonny Rollins (with the Modern Jazz Quartet ) , Anthony Braxton , Gerry Hemingway , Yosuke Yamashita , The Turtle Island String Quartet , The Toasters and the Rotterdam Ska-Jazz Foundation .
literature
- Hans-Jürgen Schaal (Ed.): Jazz standards. The encyclopedia. 3rd, revised edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7618-1414-3 .
