Miles Davis and Kind of Blue - Essay Example

of Miles Davis and Kind of Blue The focus of this essay would be the influential jazz artist Miles Dewey Davis. Davis played an important role in re-conceptualizing jazz and its multifarious forms during the latter half of the twentieth century. The emphasis shall be on Davis’ best known album Kind of Blue which was honored by the United States House of Representatives in 2009 for its remarkable contributions for constructing jazz as a “national treasure.” A short biographical note on Davis is in keeping with the subject of the essay. He was born in 1926 in Illinois. At the age of 1944 he began school at the Julliard School of Music in New York. His experiences here affected his artistic sensibilities in a profound way. While on the one hand he learned the theoretical foundations of music, he also grew to resent the prescriptive thrust on the White, Anglo-Saxon musical tradition that he found here. Subsequently Davis dropped out of Julliard and started his musical career in Harlem where he performed in the two leading clubs, Monroe’s and Minton’s Playhouse. Davis’ biggest contribution to the tradition of jazz was a technique of free and continuous interpretation, thus creating a “symbolic interpretive space” (Smith 1995) in his music. Commenting on this practice of free style, Davis observes- See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that-but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He has to use his imagination, be more creative, more innovative; he's got to take more risks [...]. So then he'll be freer, will expect things differently, will anticipate and know something different is coming down. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens. (Davis 1991, quoted in Smith, 1995) The album in focus, Kind of Blue, was first released in 1959. The importance of this album lies apart from the importance of the innovations that it brought into the field of jazz, in the fact that it is the highest selling jazz album of all time. Its historical importance can be gauged from this fact itself. This album is unique as a result of the revolutionary impact of the chord changes that it effected in the structure of the jazz song. The melody of the song was earlier created through a structure that would be written earlier. However, with the introduction of modal jazz that was not exactly a Davis innovation, there was considerable scope for innovation as the melody was created through changes in the modes of the scale rather than the changes in chords. The dependence on chord was changed in a massive way when it came to Kind of Blue. This is the reason as to why Davis is considered one of the greatest innovators of the genre. The technique of improvisation was built into the very structure of the composition and melody whereby the progression of the song could then happen through a process of improvisation on the part of the singer. Brought about by Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, this revolution was brought to its logical conclusion by Miles Davis through Kind of Blue, his greatest album (Kaplan). One of the main genres of the twentieth century as far as music is concerned, is jazz. Apart from the innovations that it introduced into other forms of music, it is also significant for its political importance as a genre that represented the aspirations and cultures of African American communities. The genre provided a voice to several people over the ages, voices that had been marginalized in the schemes of things as they existed earlier. The importance of jazz also lies in the way in which it was used to talk of certain issues that failed to be highlighted earlier as a result of the lack of an appropriate form of music or art. The emergence of jazz gave Black musicians an outlet through its freewheeling style that did not impose any restrictions on the singer. It is in such an environment that Miles Davis became an important musician in the United States of America. The rise of Miles Davis had a lot to do with the change in the direction that jazz as a form of music took towards the 1950s and the cultural and historic changes that accompanied or rather were accompanied by the musical phenomena. Davis was active since before the middle of the twentieth century and also after it. He is one of the most significant contributors to the genre of jazz and the fusion of it with several other genres. As far as this is true, his influence on several other genres can be seen even to this day (Biographies, n.d.). It might seem irrelevant for one to discuss details of the life of Miles Davis while talking of his musical career. This, however, is not true as Davis’ influence has to be understood in terms of the historical position that he occupied in the history of jazz. The space that was owned by the influences of musicians like Louis Armstrong and others was set for a great change. It is in this context that one needs to read Davis’ decision to work under the tutelage of Charlie Parker (Cole 2005). What set Parker apart from the other jazz musicians of his age was his thirst for novelty and love for innovation. Even while looking at the aspect of innovation in the music of Davis, one needs to understand the fact that his innovation was restricted to the field of music and not that of the cultural aspects of jazz even though both of them cannot be divorced from each other. It is here that one needs to talk a bit about the influence of jazz over the popular culture and music of the United States of America and other parts of the world which accepted and started to practice jazz as an art form. One of the few genres of music that lent its name to an age and became a symbol of the twenties when America was in the middle of an economic boom which was cut short by the Great Depression, jazz turned into a symbol for the prosperity of a brief period of time and was also taken up as the form of music that characterized the African American community the best. This was a result of the fact that jazz sought to incorporate within it several influences of African music that had been brought to America through the exploitative institution of slavery that brought people from Africa to America so as to provide labor for various plantations. These influences were those that were carried through to the twentieth century by the generations that had lived through slavery and emancipation. Emancipation had finally arrived in 1863 following the American Civil War. Narratives of oppression were contained within the forms of music that were incorporated into jazz and thus, made it perfect for musicians like Louis Armstrong and others to take up. It is in this tradition that Miles Davis took his place. He however, took the movement of jazz forward and introduced several innovations that led to several fusions between jazz and other forms of music that were popular in the middle of the twentieth century. This paper shall look at his musical activity before the sixties. Miles Davis is remembered today for his contributions towards the fusion of many genres with jazz including those of rock and punk. Much of this happened following the sixties; however, many of the development towards this area can be seen in the trajectory that he follows during the forties and the fifties when he was an active musician. The different elements of his music underwent changes that are important from the point of view of somebody who wishes to study music and the history of music. Miles Davis is an important name in as much as the fact that he was among those who looked upon jazz as something more than just a mouthpiece for the African American community. He was interested in the technical innovations that he later introduced into jazz. As has been said earlier in this paper, both these aspects of jazz cannot be separated from each other; there is however, a division that existed between the different groups of the avant-garde amongst the jazz as well. Gerard early talks of this when he terms Davis’s approach a “less racialistic” one (Manson, 2001). This division can be seen in the different movements that take place in jazz at this point of time in history and the different groups in the very avant-garde of jazz in the nineteen forties. The change of the genre of jazz has also to be seen on the context of the changing race relations in the United States of America. This change, owing to the interconnectedness of race, society and music which are all part of the same social fabric, need to be analyzed together. It is in this context that Davis’s urge to innovate at a certain point of time in his career becomes significant as at a later stage, he turns back to look at jazz as a musical form that has to be integrated into a larger American framework. This can be seen in the way he sticks to traditional arrangements of jazz towards the beginning, seeking to innovate from within. Later on, however, he innovates it by placing it within a larger context of music and does not restrict it to the African American canon. His collaborations with other singers and other forms of music have to be seen in this context. Towards the beginning of his career as a musician, Davis sought to look at tradition within the canon of jazz and stay true to it while at the same time, moving towards innovation. This innovation, however, needs to be understood within the context of jazz as a form of music that supports and encourages innovation during a performance and following it. Therefore, one can see the seeds of improvisation in the early days of Davis’s career when he expresses an urge to be a protege of Charlie Parker. This element of improvisation is a significant part of the career trajectory that Davis took as he later on came to be known as a person noted for his improvisatory skills. Jazz however, being a form of music that talked of social and personal issues at one and the same time while at times concealing one and the other, led to a profusion of innovations that were made at the spur of the moment as a result of the performative aspect of jazz. More than the timbre of his voice or the tweaking of melody that he accomplished as a musician, what needs to be taken note of is the changes that he made possible during the course of a performance. Such aspects of Davis’s music are very important as it was a tough job to create innovations in a field that had been saturated with change and redefined to a great extent by musicians such as Louis Armstrong in the beginning and first half of the twentieth century. The influence of Davis can be seen in the importance that other genres of music have given to performance and the fact that many musicians at this point of time feel that music is as much about the aspect of visual performance as the sound that is traditionally looked upon as the main and in some cases, the only element of music. In this sense, one may say that Davis’s influences radicalized the very field of jazz and also the way performances were viewed during the middle of the century. His influence can thus, be seen even in a musician like Michael Jackson whose legendary performances are as much a part of his persona as his music. In this sense, one needs to look at the ambiguity inherent in the aim that Davis made publicly and the effects of his performances. As far as a student of music and the history of music in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in particular is concerned, Davis is an important figure as his influence reaches out to the different genres of music that were made popular later on and also in the modes of performance that were to have a huge effect on the commercial aspect of music and its production. In this sense, one needs also to look at the semiotic aspect of performance that somebody like Christopher Smith talks about in his essay on the performative aspect of jazz and in particular, the music of Miles Davis (1995). The subversive intent of the music that was produced by Miles Davis and the performances that he used to deliver can be seen in the improvisations of his performances and the challenges that it offered to not only the white establishment but also the field of jazz which according to many had reached a point where it was comfortable in its own idea of its radicalness rather than there being any concrete subversion. Davis’s shaking up of the entire scene through his movement away from set performances and established modes of the creation of art is significant. He may not have produced music that is racialized in a complete sense of the term ; however, it must be said that the aspect of improvisation that he brought to jazz brought it back, in a certain sense to its roots where there was a sense of it reflecting the aims and aspirations of the artist who then becomes a symbol and representative of the greater collective of the community and the nation. While advocating a collectivity and a sense of togetherness in the nation and the world through a recognition and advocacy of the oneness of music, Davis managed to create a situation where his situation of the jazz form of music within the African tradition of life-affirming improvisation was taken up but unrecognized always as his contribution. Davis in the fifties moved away from the style of Bebop towards other arrangements. Hos style was however, never fixed. He was constantly in the process of innovation and this is why at any point of time in his musical career, one may be able to see the fact that his compositions are different from the ones that he composed himself at another point of time in his career. One has to however, see him as one of the greatest musicians of the twentieth century. References Cole, George. (2005). The Last Miles: The Music of Miles Davis, 1980-1991. USA: University of Michigan Press. Print. Smith, Christopher. (1995). “A Sense of the Possible: Miles Davis and the Semiotics of Improvised Performance”. TDR. 39 (1995): 3. Retrieved 1 Nov. 2012, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1146463 Manson, Ingrid. (2001). “Miles, Politics and Image”. Miles Davis and American Culture. Ed. Gerard Early. Missouri: Missouri Historical Society Press. Print. Biographies. (n.d.). Jazz. Retrieved 1 Nov. 2012, from http://www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_davis_miles.htm Kaplan, Fred. (2009). “Kind of Blue”. Slate. Retrieved 1 Nov. 2012, from http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/music_box/2009/08/kind_of_blue.html Read More