Cantaloupe Island: Analysis

I have published a lead sheet to Herbie Hancock's Cantaloupe Island on this site, which you can find here. In this article I will try to analyse the piece and to give some thoughts on the composition and the way it can be played.

First of all (to get that off my chest,) the theme is 16 bars long. I cannot start to count the people I have heard playing this song in a 12-bar format.
I can understand the mistake, though. In essence, the piece has three phrases, and as is the case in traditional blues: each phrase is 4 bars in length. Even more like blues is the build-up of the melody, as the first and second phrase are identical and the third one is some sort of a conclusion. However, the piece then returns to 4 bars of F-minor to get us back on track and in the key.

Let's start with a look at the melody.
There is a very traditional melody, built on the notes of the F-minor pentatonic scale (which, as it happens, is akin to the blues scale in the key, so another point for the people who make the mistake of playing 12 bars.).
The second phrase is the same as the first, literally, and we'll see what this means when we look at the harmony in a moment. One more thing to note, though, is the fact that the centre of the melody is the note F, the finalis, so to speak.

Now, the harmony - here's where it gets interesting.
The key is F-minor, which is played in the first four bars of melody. Then we get to the second chord, Db7. How do we classify this one? In a normal F-minor setting, the VI would be Db-major, not dominant. Now, we could get all theoretical and look at it as a VIx (the short cut for when you are not sure what to call it,) or we could think about it as if it is the tritonus substitute for the dominant in the key, a bIIx in C, but that is stretching things a bit too far for my tastes. We could easily have another four similarly far-fetched theories.

To my mind, this piece represents a forage into classical music theory from the nineteenth century.
In essence, the melody preserves the tonal centre, the key, while the second chord moves slightly away from it, creating a sort of bi-tonal tension.
With Db7, the only note that is different is the Cb, where you would expect a C. However, in the melody - I think, very deliberately - there is a C, not a Cb. Also notice that in practice, there are many, many people who will play a Cb in the melody there.

You could say Hancock throws a spanner in the works which causes everything to grind a bit, but not too much. Until he gets to the third chord, which is where the tension really builds.
The melody is still firmly rooted in F-Minor pentatonic, but the chord no longer has anything in common with the melody (except, of course, for the all-important note F,) and the D-minor chord really stings.

I have seen lead sheets which tell you to play D7(b9) there. Definitely not - it is D-minor. You could see it as a phrygian mode, or say the piece is in F-minor Dorian and this is the real VI, the sound of it all tells you we have something strange, and therefore hard to explain using conventional theory.
As with the previous chord, to my mind, Hancock again moves the harmony away from the key, while preserving the tonal centre in the melody, creating friction. To my mind he is, as great composers before him did, playing with bi-tonality, and he uses the chord more for colour than function.

Now, what to play on that? The usual improvising techniques will, of course, give good results. But I am intrigued by the composition. If the idea is to gradually increase the tension, before releasing it in the final 4 bars (which are important in that sense,) it would be a challenge to build the solo in the same way. This means: stay in F-minor, and make your audience believe it, just like they believe the song itself.

I am sorry to say I am not good enough to pull that stunt off, and will play the changes themselves. But one day...

If you don't have it already, I suggest you get the album this song is on. It is worth it.

Empyrean Isles

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