Footnote
1937 was a big year for Dizzy Gillespie. It was a big
year for the Baha'i community. 1937 was the year that the
formal and organized teaching Plans of the Baha'i community
began. In 1937 Dizzy went to New York. It was here
that he met Charlie Parker who also came to New York three
years later in 1940.
The Seven Year
Plan, 1937-1944, saw a secret musical energy or fire develop
in the jazz world, especially toward the end of the Plan when
Charlie and Dizzy played together. It was all part of an
exceptional moment in jazz and they called that moment--swing.
It was full of innovation, experimentation, improvisation,
heart and soul, a new artistic emotion. Dizzy represented the
intellectual core of this new music. By 1942 a new phase, a
second phase, in the history, the life of jazz, had begun. The
first phase had lasted from 1917 to 1942 or so Ken Burns and
the producers and directors of this new TV series on jazz
argued.
This prose-poem,
I should add in conclusion, draws on the words of Shoghi
Effendi in the collection of his letters: 1932-1946.
- Ron Price with
thanks to ABC TV, "Jazz: Swinging With Change-Episode
7," September 21st, 2003, 5:00-6:00 pm.
