Skip to main content

Nina Simone - Trouble in Mind

And so it goes. In the world of artists of all mediums and disciplines, the musician is most audacious when it comes to altering another’s creation. Imagine an artist taking a palette of paints and a brush to the Museum of Fine Arts and painting an extra nose on a Picasso masterpiece? Or someone putting a hat on Rodin’s timeless bronze and marble sculpture The Thinker? Scandalous, to say the least... and possibly resulting in some jail time!

However, the history of jazz performance and arranging, as well as European classical tradition... is filled with players and writers whose creative intention could be distilled down to Tal’s response.

There are instances in which the reharmonized song is considered so superior to the original chord changes that the new version becomes the standard harmonic form which, in turn, becomes subjected to further variation. The Victor Young classic “Stella by Starlight” and the Burke/Van Heusen standard “Like Someone in Love” are excellent examples of “new” standards.

Can you imagine what a cocktail pianist, who has been on the same five night a week gig for 10 years, would have to endure if they weren’t able to take some kind of harmonic liberty with the repertoire? Maybe reharmonization contributes to good mental health for the performer. No matter how you frame it, reharmonization has a long-standing tradition in the world of jazz and popular music.

For the improvising player, reharmonization is regarded as improvising harmonies to a fixed melody line, the opposite of melodic improvisation. For the improviser who is soloing melodically within the standard framework of the chord changes of a tune, the various substitution and approach techniques... and superimposed against the rhythm section accompaniment can be applied to great effect.

To reharmonize means to alter the underlying harmonic form, while maintaining the original melodic structure. It is essentially an arrangement change that puts the focus on the harmony.

Nina Simone - Trouble in Mind
  • Written by: Richard M. Jones
  • First recording and first release by: Thelma La Vizzo May 1924
  • Released on: November 1960


"Some were songs that she wrote herself, while others were new arrangements of other standards, and others had been written especially for the singer. Her first hit song in America was her rendition of George Gershwin's "I Loves You, Porgy" 1958."

See previous Song of the Day

Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Psychotic Reactions - Skip To My Lou

It expresses the emotions of angst, anger, and lust in some of the only ways that are accepted by society. The history of this edgy music genre dates back to the 1950s. It was formed by a combination of the blues, gospel music, and country. Throughout the decades, rock ‘n roll has evolved and become famous for being the genre that’s continued to push the boundaries of music, and, sometimes, the cultural boundaries of society itself. In the 1950s rock ‘n roll could be defined as rhythm and blues. In the 1960s it was partial to new musical styles such as folk rock and soul. And in the 1970s hard rock was born. From the 1980s to the present, technology has had an enormous impact on the music industry. Good taste is the enemy of the revolution. This remark epitomizes the spirit of rock ‘n roll. You’re not expected to conform, you’re expected to be yourself… no matter what anyone thinks. You are admired deeply for expressing emotions such as anger, heartbreak, and sadness through music in a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Pat Moran Quartet - Come Rain Or Come Shine

The very institutional acceptance that many musicians sought in the mid to late 20th century has hitched jazz to a broken and still segregated education system. Partly as a result, the music has become inaccessible to, and disconnected from, many of the very people who created it, young Black Americans, poorer people and others at the societal margins. Of the more than 500 students who graduate from American universities with jazz degrees each year, less than 10 percent are Black, according to Department of Education statistics compiled by DataUSA. In 2017, the last year with data available, precisely 1 percent of jazz degree grads were Black women. The education is the anchor... We should be questioning our education system. Is it working? Is there a pipeline into the university for indigenous Black Americans to play their music, and learn their music? I don’t think that exists. Source: Jazz Has Always Been Protest Music. Can It Meet This Moment? by Giovanni Russonello The Pat Moran Q...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kenny Dorham - Like Someone In Love Take 2

In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable as white audiences began listening to blues. Blues came into its own as an important part of the country’s relatively new popular culture in the 1920s with the recording, first, of great female classic blues singers and, then, of the country folk blues singers of the Mississippi Delta, the Piedmont of the Carolinas, and Texas. The first copyrighted song was in 1912, the Dallas Blues. As huge numbers of African Americans left the South at this time due to failed Reconstruction, dismal economic conditions, oppression in the South and the hope of better treatment in the North between 1915 and 1940s, the blues went with them, and settled in the urban centers of the North, especially Chicago. A more urban, electric blues developed as a result, which eclipsed the rural blues of the South and eventually became both rock and roll and what would become known as rhythm and blues. Blues fell somewhat out of popular favor until the l...
Post a Comment
Read more