Vincent Toro is an award-winning, NYC based poet, playwrite, director, actor and scholar. Toro’s most recent prize is the 2001 Metlife Nuestras Voces Playwriting Award. He is pursuing his MFA in Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Newark and is currently enrolled in Dr. Lewis Porter’s Thelonious Monk/Ornette Coleman Seminar. While taking Dr. Porter’s seminar, the class deeply focused on the Robin D. G. Kelly biography. Toro composed a poem that captures not only the musicality of the written word but interweaves the historical and biographical blocks that created the “unique” Thelonious Monk.
Vincent Toro
To perform the piece, Toro collaborated with Hardbop editor and Rutgers Jazz History grad student Alexander Ariff. The two crafted a musical performance with a beat, allowing the poet a groove to rap his poem atop. Vincent Toro explains his motivation behind writing the poem, “These Keys” : “In reading anthologies of jazz poems for my research project for this class, I came to an understanding that I did not want the poem for the performance to be deduced to “name dropping,” as so many jazz poems seem to do. I wanted to deal directly with the defining characteristics of Monk’s music and the draw themes directly from his life.”
“Name dropping” may appear in Monk poems such as Sacha Feinstein’s “Buying Wine”: When I return with a bottle / he’s playing “Blue Monk,” slow for the mood.
Vincent Toro was after something different: “the poem is a hip-hop jazz poem that envisions Monk’s life as a collective dream that we as listeners get to be active participants in. “These Keys” treats Monk’s life as an allegory for finding personal liberation in the face of exterior forces that want to limit, categorize, and exploit your talent and work. The “keys” in the poem are the vessel or weapon through which Monk is able to carve out his own identity. The “keys” are recursive metaphors: The piano keys as a key that opens doors to other possibilities.”
“These Keys” by Vincent Toro
(Lyrics for “Monk’s Dream” by Thelonious Sphere Monk)
these keys like the projects of Columbus Hill
like a drunk rhombus or a discombobulated rumba
like dreams slunk on dime store racks
like a trinkle tinkle in time a melodious thunk plunked
as you squint diligently these keys like footprints scuffing
Mintons floor like a miniscule Crepuscule the jewel of Mingus’
bass chords minced as Evidence diced fine like Nellie’s veggies
blind like stubborn sidemen playing out of time don’t know
there ain’t no wrong notes so don’t ask me to lay out
to lay down to lay low or hang up this fedora the explorer
Pandora these keys unlocked unabridged
like the mystery of Epistrophy apostrophe
fingers atrophy from atrocities wrought by calamity
of the cabaret card these keys bop hard bunched
like whole tone bouquets buffets of Steinways plinked with clunky
funky finesse as Bud and the Baroness baritone of Mulligan bless
these keys harmonically sardonically chronically sonically
stride and swing Jackie-ing Rhythm-a-ning do your thing
let them call you crazy when the swing got you swirling
let them call you lazy when you refuse to play a matinee
either way they’ll try to play you out devoutly pout
deny you vilify you canonize then sterilize you
organize to make an off minor myth out of you
once you split the scene for good lord no one sees
that these keys are your blood your
Nutty Mood your Ugly Beauty food delicious
dissonant and misunderstood
the critics will print the banter about the drugs
the tragedies black poverty pry about mental
dis-ease but nobody will concede
or want to believe that you were ele
funda experi instru mentally happy tapping
these keys like drunk skunk Columbus rhombus
these keys of Mingus Mintons Mysterious Epistrophes
these keys that deliver dissonant epiphanies
that know all the landlord and the labels can’t see
these keys that capture and spring undiscovered melodies
these keys are so far out dazzling hilarious
these keys like junk dreams in junk drawers toys of chromatic joys
that know that know that silence is the loudest noise
In the performance, Vincent Toro is attempting to implement two important characteristics. He explains: “The first is the use of space/silence. Monk’s melodies seem to consist of bunch up notes followed by intervals of silence that create a distinctive voice. Often the silence appears in unexpected moments. I wanted to emulate this in my phrasing of the poem, which is loosely transcribe by space on the page if you look at the poem. ”
“The second characteristic, one that is broader and more general, is the sense of playfulness in the music. There is a sense of humor in Monk’s playing, a way that he approaches his instrument as if he doesn’t take it too seriously, even though he is dead serious about the music. It creates a spirit of fun that, in my opinion, a fundamental part of why people still enjoy his music so much. I tried to echo this by utilizing word play and slanted repetition in the lines, meaning the repetition doesn’t follow or set pattern and it doesn’t always repeat exactly the way you heard/read it the first time.”
The musical approach to accompanying a poet may appear like a new ballpark of rules but it’s not. David Amram–who participated with Jack Kerouac, among others, in the late 1950s NY jazz/poetry revolution stated that “any musician backing up a poet ought to treat the poet like a singer–know how to listen!” In “These Keys,” the performance engages and requires the listener’s attention. It represents a balanced group mentality that expands on the possibility’s of Monk’s rhythm. With collaborations like “These Keys,” the “jazz” poem’s definition continues to widen into sophisticated hip-hop territory.
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