Thelonious Monk and the Lost Cradle of Modern Jazz
A hidden history of twentieth-century American modernity that begins in a once-dynamic Black neighborhood in New York City with Thelonious Monk as its guiding star.
During the first half of the twentieth century, the twelve blocks that would become Lincoln Center were something else entirely: a densely alive, largely Black neighborhood known as San Juan Hill, and for a time, to its inhabitants simply as the Jungles. It was one of the most creatively fertile communities in American cultural history — and it was erased, deliberately, under the guise of urban renewal by New York’s uniquely powerful unelected official, Robert Moses.
Thelonious Monk grew up in those streets. His music — angular, dissonant, unlike anything before or since — was shaped by that world. As the neighborhood was targeted for demolition, Monk himself endured another kind of exclusion: like his idol, Billie Holiday, he was silenced by being denied a cabaret card for years, while his genius was slow to gain recognition.
Meanwhile, a new myth grew up around the Broadway play and Hollywood hit West Side Story, which rewrote the past of those very streets as if their Black inhabitants had never existed.
The Jungles restores their lost history.
This is a book about America’s musical culture, and the invention of its most authentic contribution to the world: modern jazz. At its center is the story of the unique genius of Thelonious Monk and the extraordinary neighborhood — now lost — that produced him.
Its narratives about the man and the neighborhood come together in a powerfully revealing treatment of race, creativity, urban power, and American cultural memory.