Stan Kenton: Monotony

In 1948, at the pinnacle of success, bandleader Stan Kentonwho at his wife's urging had entered psychoanalysisannounced his intention "to give up music and become a psychiatrist." Kenton soon reconsidered his projected 12-year metamorphosis, and returned to music. "Monotony" shows Kenton's fascination with the obsessive-compulsive repetition of Ravel's Boléro (1928) that led French neurologists to detect (65 years postmortem; ain't science grand?) "the influence of progressive cerebral disease on Ravel's creative process." No doubt the more original an artist, the better a target for the shrink squad. But what's crazy about repetition? What's crazy about repetition? What's crazy about repetition?