Felonious Monk

The San Juan Hill community that Thelonius Monk moved to in 1922 was especially ethnically and culturally diverse, even for New York. Though whites and blacks lived in the same greater neighborhood, they were still segregated along streets and avenues, as well as internally by country of origin. Many of the whites lived along the avenues, and were mostly Irish, German, and Italian; forty percent of the area's black population came from the South and the Caribbean, twenty percent came from the British West Indies, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, and thirty-five percent were born in New York (Kelly 18). Though there was some racial tension between the Southern blacks and West Indian blacks (Monk later recalled, "They used to call me, 'Monkey,' and you know what a drag that was,"), most racial tension stemmed from the Irish and Italian's mistreatment of blacks. Monk's quote that "There's no reason why I should go through that Black Power shit now," underscores the reality of the racially conflicted San Juan Hill community, where Southern blacks called West Indian blacks "monkey chasers", where New York-born blacks called Southern blacks "possum eaters", and where "It looked like the order of the day was for the cops to go out and call all the kids black bastards" (Kelly 19). Because the tensions between different communities were so high, it really seemed like "every street was a different town" Kelly 19).
Despite its numerous failings, the diversity of San Juan Hill informed and shaped Monk's music. His first piano teacher was Simon Wolf, an Austrian-born Jew that shaped Monk's naturally fine ear with classic and Baroque pieces. His two other main influences at that time were a black jazz musician named Alberta Simmons, who taught Monk stride and ragtime piano, and his mother, Barbara Monk, who occasionally sang church hymns with Monk's piano accompaniment (Kelly 27). These influences, along with the Tango and Rhumba popular among the Caribbean populations, shaped Monk's various musical ear.
Once he became an established musician, playing for nightclubs such as Five Spot, Monk garnered the attention of white bohemians: Frank O'Hara, Joan Mitchell, Jack Kerouac, and Alan Ginsberg (Kelly 228). Aside from the bohemians, the white community largely rejected the presence of blacks, or "spades". By that time, Monk had influenced another black musician named David Amram, who opened up doors for other black musicians to play in venues such as the Five Spot. Eventually, Monk played a gig at the Five Spot on July 4, 1957, but his history of drug use and emotional instability--bi-polar disorder--was a major cause of concern among his fellow musicians club promoters (2.26. Lecture and Kelly 228, 229). Despite his surroundings, Monk went to great lengths to de-politicize and take issues of race out of his music: "My music is not a social comment on discrimination or poverty or the like. I would have written the same way even if I had not been a Negro" (Kelly 229). Ultimately, however, his music influenced the community to be more open to issues of race and discrimination.