A looming figure in the world of jazz and of twentieth century music as a whole, Duke Ellington nonetheless relied on the unique skills of the musicians he worked with and owes some of his best work to collaborative efforts. Among such pieces is the famous tune "Caravan," which was first recorded in 1936 and subsequently enjoyed numerous arrangements and transcriptions and innumerable performances. The piece was written with and for Juan Tizol, who helped raise the Ellington Orchestra trombone section to legendary status in the 1940s and '50s. "Caravan" mixes a richly melodic, vaguely oriental sound with the underlying rhythmic drive of Tizol's Latino roots. The allure of the piece, and the distinguishing feature shared by its various arrangements, is the twisting chromatic melody that alternately circles in mysterious semitones around the fifth scale degree, suddenly leaps upwards, and chromatically slinks downward toward the tonic. This sinewy, circuitous line plays against busy percussion and piano rhythms, a pointed bass line, and syncopated chordal punctuations in the orchestra. This might seem like musical caricature to ears accustomed to the geographic precision and assumed cultural authenticity of world music at the end of the twentieth century, but in the 1930s (and, arguably, still today), musical exoticism evoked the sounds of a place removed by imagination rather than distance. Ellington's "Caravan," in its various instantiations (or even in individual versions) seems to noncommittally wander across various landscapes, from Iberia to the Silk Road, from the desert to the tropics; the sounds of Tizol's native Puerto Rico mingle with notions of a distant Arabia. Ultimately, however, the angular melodies primarily serve to extend the musical palette, an expansion of expressive possibilities metaphorically reinterpreted as an exploration of unknown lands. Ellington and Tizol add thick, blocky harmonies moving in parallel fashion to their dark, angular, chromatic lines, creating a sonority that is modern in its polytonal complexity, but nonetheless immediately discernible. A bridge section, which shifts to the major mode with a melody of carefree, falling arpeggios and a more straightforward swing feel, emphasizes through contrast the coy mystery of the main melody, which returns after a clever modulatory twist back to minor. In some versions, the final statement of the melody culminates in a loud, stridently dissonant chord that lingers unresolved at the piece's end.

© All Music Guide

Portions of Content Provided by All Music Guide.
© 2008 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide is a registered trademark of All Media Guide, LLC.