Interview WPKN 89.5 FM Miles Okasaki and Robin Kelley
Miles Okasaki - Work
“Exhaustive” is certainly a word that comes to mind for Work. Miles Okazaki was armed only with his solo guitar when he recorded all 70 known compositions by Thelonious Monk (70 being the number included in Steve Cardenas and Don Sickler’s Thelonious Monk Fakebook). It’s an undertaking of such ambition, even Monk never got there: Work includes “52nd Street Theme,” “Two Timer,” and “A Merrier Christmas,” compositions that the legendary pianist didn’t record himself.
To hear individual tracks, though, is not to be hit in the face with any sort of grandiose intent. Each is a stark, unadorned guitar solo, lightly amplified and fingerpicked, without effects pedals or post-production processing or thickets of overdubs. Textures vary not at all across the 70 tunes, tone very little—except where Okazaki can alter it with his fingers alone. The variation comes from the compositions, and whatever Okazaki feels the need to bring to them. He makes some surprising, sometimes amusing but usually fulfilling stylistic choices: “A Merrier Christmas” and “Monk’s Mood” both read like Appalachian folk ballads, “Skippy” like 1950's rockabilly. It’s an exposition of the art of the guitarist, if nothing else.
Robin D.G. Kelley
Robin D.G. Kelley's newest book is Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. In focusing on the career of the eccentric jazz pianist and composer, Kelley reveals new details about Monk's life, music and mental health problems, and provides a glimpse into the New York jazz scene of the mid-twentieth century.
Kelley's book traces Monk's music journey from childhood piano lessons to late night concerts in the Village and offers a behind-the-scenes view of historic recording sessions for classic albums like Brilliant Corners and Monk's Music.
Robin D.G. Kelley is a Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He is the author of many prize-winning cultural studies books such as Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. His essays have appeared in The Nation, New York Times Magazine and Rolling Stone.
