A Night in Tunisia

"A Night in Tunisia" is a musical composition written by Dizzy Gillespie around 1941–42, while Gillespie was playing with the Benny Carter band. It has become a jazz standard.

This article is about the Dizzy Gillespie song. For other uses, see A Night in Tunisia (disambiguation).
"A Night in Tunisia"
Instrumental by Dizzy Gillespie & His Sextet
Released1942
Recorded1944
GenreJazz, bebop[1]
Composer(s)

It is also known as "Interlude".[2] Gillespie called the tune "Interlude" and said "some genius decided to call it 'Night in Tunisia'". He said the tune was composed at the piano at Kelly's Stables in New York. He gave Frank Paparelli co-writer credit in compensation for some unrelated transcription work, but Paparelli had nothing to do with the song.[3] "A Night in Tunisia" was one of the signature pieces of Gillespie's bebop big band, and he also played it with his small groups. In January 2004, The Recording Academy added the 1946 Victor recording by Gillespie to the Grammy Hall of Fame.

On the album A Night at Birdland Vol. 1, Art Blakey introduced his 1954 cover version with this statement: "At this time we'd like to play a tune [that] was written by the famous Dizzy Gillespie. I feel rather close to this tune because I was right there when he composed it in Texas on the bottom of a garbage can." The audience laughs, but Blakey responds, "Seriously." The liner notes say, "The Texas department of sanitation can take a low bow."

Analysis
Bass vamp underpinning the A sections of "A Night in Tunisia"

The complex ostinato bass line in the "A section" is notable for avoiding the standard walking bass pattern of straight quarter notes, and the use of oscillating half-step-up/half-step-down chord changes (using the Sub V, a tritone substitute chord for the dominant chord) gives the song a unique, mysterious feeling. The B section is notable for having an unresolved minor II-V, since the chord progression of the B section is taken from the B section of the standard "Alone Together", causing the V chord to lead back into the Sub V of the A section.

Like many of Gillespie's tunes, it features a short written introduction and a brief interlude that occurs between solo sections — in this case, a twelve-bar sequence leading into a four-bar break for the next soloist.

Cover versions

References
  1. Porter, Eric (31 January 2002). What Is This Thing Called Jazz?: African American Musicians as Artists, Critics, and Activists. University of California Press. pp. 74–. ISBN 978-0-520-92840-4. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
  2. "Night in Tunisia" at jazzstandards.com. Accessed 10 January 2008.
  3. Gillespie, Dizzy (2009). To Be, or Not – to Bop. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 171–172. ISBN 978-0-8166-6547-1. Retrieved 14 October 2018.
  4. Gioia, Ted (2012). The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire. New York City: Oxford University Press. pp. 299–300. ISBN 978-0-19-993739-4.
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