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KEYNOTE: Citizen Monk: Stories of Civic Engagement and Visionary Politics

Robin Kelley

Published: 2009-09-11

VIDEO: Dr. Kelley discusses the defiance of form
that characterized Thelonius Monk's music,
and argues that even if Monk viewed his
own music as apolitical, it still inspired
political action by exemplifying an ethos of
freedom that applies directly to the social world. TEXT: An abstract and Dr. Kelley's biography.

Available Files

So one of the things that improvisation has come to mean in the context of highly technological performance is that improvisation is the last claim to the legitimate presence of a human in the performance of music.

– Bob Ostertag