Rhythm-a-Ning
Barry named Monk’s Rhythm-a-ning among the Monk tunes his generation took to and among Monk’s pieces he admired, and a 1998 profile says he held that small children could learn it by ear. No class in the archive shows him working on it.
- moments in class
- 3
- recordings
- 2
- Barry plays it
- 1
What he teaches through it
A 1998 magazine profile says he worked with children from about five, by ear rather than through theory and written music, and held that children who can memorise nursery songs can also learn Monk tunes such as Rhythm-a-ning and Little Rootie Tootie. In his own words there, jazz is another language, and very young children pick up a second language easily.
Talking about Monk in 2014, he listed Rhythm-a-ning with ‘Round Midnight, Pannonica and Monk’s Mood as Monk music his generation took to (the captions garble the titles). Monk, he explained, wrote tunes on standards, Evidence on Just You, Just Me for one, so it was easy for him and his peers to learn Monk’s melodies and play them over changes they already knew, such as I Got Rhythm.
In his own words
You think that they can’t learn at that age, but you’d be surprised. Children are very open and susceptible to learning a second language when they are two, three years old.
And “52nd Street Theme,” “Rhythm-a-ning,” “Bolivar Blues,” “Straight No Chaser,” all those things. When he died, I played Monk’s music all night long.
In class
Every moment he works on it, with the ideas of the method it shows.
The last train to Monk: an interview
Interview: Bird, Hawkins, Monk and New York
- 44:05
The radio host introduces Barry’s live 1984 Monk medley, which includes Rhythm-a-ning.
Barry plays it
- I Got Rhythm - Rhythm A Ning2018, 6 min YouTube
In the method
The ideas of the method these moments show, and how many moments each.