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Home , Airto Moreira, Don Alias, First Miles, Larry Young (musician), Tony Williams (drummer)

Bautista 1

Jancis Bautista

Professor Aurelea Mahood

English 100

24 November 2016

Miles Davis: An Innovator to Modern Music

Miles Davis is regarded as an important figure and visionary in history, directing new pathways from a variety of innovative sounds and forms that rejuvenates music into its highest artistry. A fearless man, Miles pushed boundaries, delivering the unexpected, which transformed music history, creating new territories in artistic and popular styles that impacted many musicians of today. Even more so, he has garnered many fans and critics of different backgrounds and knowledge of music bringing each individual their own opinion, thoughts, ideas and revelations of what music meant to them.

I know myself that I have my own experience of Miles Davis; in my senior year of high school in 2016, I played my first Miles Davis tune, , in our Jazz combos. It was our ​ ​ first reading of the tune and I played tenor saxophone with the rhythm section of our band. I felt every chord with sensitivity- flooding with emotions that I could not describe the divine of music. On that day, right after school I bolted home and eager to listen to Miles Davis’ recording of the tune. It was even more beautiful than I imagined. His lyrical and open sound touched my heart as his Harmon muted trumpet buzzed through my ears, along with Bill Evans’ soft touch on Bautista 2

the and Paul Chamber’s warm bass lines complimenting every note Miles plays. It was an

unforgettable moment.

It has been almost 25 years since Miles Davis passed away from pneumonia and

respiratory failure, yet even to this day, I am so amazed of his music being the fact that I am far

away from such generation of musicians. Through this anthology, I hope to illustrate through

different sources of recordings, and articles why Miles Davis was an innovator of music. These

various sources are ordered as accurately by date (though articles are rather spread out at times)

from his unexpected start of popularity in the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival to his grounded

confidence and arrogance in (1970). I hope that going through these sources in ​ ​ order can bring an experience to the reader of who Miles Davis really is.

Davis’ career encompassed decades as a jazz musician while introducing new

heights of artistry in music for each decade. It is also significant to discuss Miles Davis’ personal

life along with his relationships with fellow musicians he has worked with. Davis truly embodied

the importance of collaboration, inspiring and cultivating his fellow jazz people about personal

creativity, leading people to find their own passion for music. He was able to initiate new sounds

and revolutionize music because of his genius and bold personality but he also believed in others

who can explore, experiment and rebel against the standards of music. Miles always told his

bandmates to not play what’s “there” but to play what’s not “there”. Most of his contemporaries

have indicated that wherever Miles goes, the music goes as well. It is with great significance to

view Miles as a gatekeeper, opening many gateways that allowed many artist to explore and Bautista 3

expand beyond their own measures, eager to take music in another place. He was a pioneer to a

variety of music, delivering his mission to the world to not stop being creative humans.

The humble beginnings of Miles Davis then became a star is illustrated in Kofi

Natambu’s, Miles Davis: A New Revolution in Sound. While he daringly played difficult ​ ​ compositions of Thelonious Monk, during the second annual Newport Jazz Festival in 1955, it

was more significant that “Davis captivated the festival throng with haunting, dynamic solos and

brilliant ensemble playing.” (37). It was then in the fifties when he finally “arrived”, clean from

drugs- no longer addicted that he was able to straighten his “creative clarity” receiving deals

from and soon to be his long lasting and paramount career with Columbia

Records (37); through these opportunities, commenced Miles to bring new ideas and innovations

that would transform Jazz history. The birth of developing ideas came forth first on his trumpet,

changing his tone that “brought a burnished lyricism that was both deeply introspective and

fiercely driving all at once.” and his “phrasing emphasizes and focuses on the relationship of

space to tempo and melody”, establishing his own aesthetic style (38). Moreover, Miles Davis

was able to broaden “expressive possibilities” regarding “musical improvisation and

composition” portraying “[a] personal quest” to explore many “complexities and ambiguities” in

“emotional and psychological” ways of playing (38). In addition to this, Natambu characterizes

Davis as a “social and cultural avatar” to African Americans through his music with an ambition

of personal creativity, intellectual independence, and freedom of social and cultural endeavours

that defied racial and repressive injustices of the world (38-39). Miles Davis’ rebellious passion Bautista 4

to innovate music turned into a creative and powerful action for social change that synthesized

for a progressive future.

It is with no doubt that the 1959 Miles Davis’ album was an important ​ ​ ​ ​ landmark for and in Jazz history itself. Featuring his sextet: Cannonball

Adderley on alto saxophone (except on “Blue in Green”); on tenor saxophone; Bill

Evans and Wynton Kelly (on “”) on piano; Paul Chambers on bass; and

Jimmy Cobb on drums, Davis experimented with his music basing the album on modality. At

that time, it was a revolutionary record contrasting Davis’ and his mentor’s earlier work with bee

bop and hard bop. This album established two important aspects of music: harmony and style. In

his early days, Davis associated and influenced himself with people such as and

Dizzy Gillespie, who were considered “kings” of bee bop; a series of chord changes, harmonic

substitutions, modulations and technical melodies were present in bee bop tunes. In addition,

improvising on these tunes required an immense amount of virtuosity and technique. An example

in contrast to bee bop is Davis’ composition, “So What”, which is a 32 bar piece of only 2

chords: 16 bars of D minor seven, following 8 bars of E flat minor seven and closing with

another 8 bars of D minor seven. Davis, on the other hand tossed aside bee bop elements,

focusing on scales in terms of structure and melodic inventions through the use of modal chords.

It is also crucial to observe Miles’ musical language in improvisation as he flourishes his warm

and non-vibrato tone, along with his control of long tones and spaces in the music; it was to the

extreme opposite of bee bop’s fast, rapid, and intense style of playing. It is with a total surprise Bautista 5

in the jazz world of 1959 that Miles Davis achieved the level of innovation through simplicity as

today it is known to be one of the bestselling jazz records in history.

Subsequently, Miles had switched around band members from 1960-1964 after the

departure of the Kind of Blue line-up to their own desired paths and it was not until 1965 when ​ ​ he was set with his legendary Second Great . In an article by Mark C. Gridley focuses on

Keith Waters’ The Studio Recordings of the , 1965-68, providing an outline ​ ​ of Waters’ research on Davis’ Quintet through recordings, compositions and stories from the

band. Furthermore, simple and scholarly summarization is provided by Gridley, paraphrasing

Waters about the groups’ harmonic, rhythmic, and improvisational ambiguities (768). As

observed through their studio and live recordings, it is evident that each member had extremely

good ‘chops’ (the ability to play their instrument) “effortlessly negotiating between hard bop and

free jazz” This established a new period of Miles Davis that “[introduces] the rule-breaking

achievements [and innovation] of these extraordinary musicians who collectively improvised

with almost magical rapport and achieved the highest level of artistry in jazz” (728).

A prime example of that artistry is delineated on the 1967 release of the Second Great

Quintet’s . Miles Davis himself handpicked (tenor saxophone), ​ ​ (piano), (bass) and (drums), bringing innovative and

astonishing ideas in improvisation and original works. The extension of modal melodies, tempo,

form and meter is further explored abstractly. For example, Saxophonist, Wayne Shorter’s

composition “” starts with a bass line in twelve-eight (12/8) played by Ron Carter

throughout the whole piece while drummer, Tony Williams freely incorporates three-over-two Bautista 6

cross rhythms and its four-four (4/4) relation of afro-Cuban and swing rhythms providing

different colours for the soloist to improvise over. The improvisational qualities of this recording

were not as traditional as they focused more on developing structures on scales taking most of

the piano out for comping chord changes, taking the possibility of the soloist to switch chords

over the bass notes, however they want. The band members themselves had the ability to also

veer off from the tune, moving harmonies and rhythm into another dimension and plainly going

back like it was planned. Much of the album simply derives into the mixture of hard bop and

free jazz making this album an innovative venture of Miles Davis. Through their magnificent

chemistry and flexible communication that transcended jazz beyond its limitations.

It is important to include Miles Davis’ contribution to the development of improvisation

and his aspirations of artistic freedom through collaboration as analyzed on Christopher Smith’s

article, A sense of the Possible, Miles Davis and the Semiotics of Improvised Performance, in ​ ​ which Smith uses the “Second Great Quintet” (1964-1968) and the “Post-Retirement Bands”

(1981-1990) exhibiting the improvisational genius of Miles. As highlighted by Smith, Miles had

the “ability to construct and manipulate improvisational possibilities [within a variety of] other

performance parameters,” which circles around Miles Davis’ own intuition and artistic talent that

created his own semiotics in improvised music (41). Many of Miles Davis’ innovation in

manipulating improvisation derive into the categories of ritual space and symbolic vocabularies.

In the most basic terms, Smith illustrates Miles Davis’ manipulation of ritual space as a flexible

atmosphere opening a gateway for spontaneous improvisations; this stretched the possibilities for

many players in Davis’ band as he did not stick through a specific order or way of playing as

well as using their own instinct (without verbal or physical signals) to move the music, fleeing Bautista 7

away from traditional techniques (42-43). Performance, in regards to Miles Davis and his band,

has achieved a higher level in creative tension and intuition as a symbolic vocabulary making

improvisation as an ever growing product of complexity and immediacy in musical

communication (44). It is important to emphasize that Miles “profoundly influenced generations

of jazz musicians” (many who are mentioned on his album Bitches Brew) becoming performers ​ ​ who “allude to a way of hearing, responding, and encouraging others to hear and respond”

enriching the art form and freedom of jazz for future generations (52).

No musician has ever frustrated many critics and fans about an album other than Miles

Davis himself. He put the music world unto an unexpected musical journey giving birth to

unthinkable sounds, effects, noises, compositions and spontaneous improvisations with his

audacious release of Bitches Brew (1970). Precedent to this was the innovative “Second Great ​ ​ ​ ​ Quintet” and his experimentation with electric sounds on the album, (1969) ​ ​ Davis gathered many visionary musicians for an all-star jam session: Wayne Shorter and Steve

Grossman on soprano saxophone; Bernie Maupin on bass clarinet; , ,

Larry Young and Herbie Hancock on electric keyboards; John McLaughlin on Guitar; Dave

Holland and Ron Carter on ; Harvey Brooks on electric bass; , Jack

DeJohnette and on drums; Khalil Balakrishna on sitar; and , Jumma

Santos, Bihari Sharma, and on auxiliary percussions. It is as if all of Miles Davis’

musical ideas combusted in the recording studio, making all its participants burn out passionately

with every single sound created. Many of these musicians he worked with after, continued with

their own projects inspired from this creation, developing and sustaining Davis’ vision. Unusual

details can be observed through this album and it is apparent that Miles was going through a Bautista 8 phase, putting his extreme creativity to its limits. Firstly, this album contains a huge amount of people participating; although, it is not the quantity of people that is peculiar, rather the number of instruments– multiplying its rhythm section– that makes this album yet to be the most unorthodox formation in jazz history. In relation to this, the length of each piece of music in the album ranges from 4 minutes up to 25 minutes long. Most significantly, these musicians create the most incomprehensible, and incoherent sounds, yet a sense of musical virtuosity and coherence of playing is present, resulting a complicated paradoxical feeling for the listener. This form of music was a true innovation in which Miles provided the ritual space of creating on the spot as music in this record is impossible to be notated in an orderly and understandable way.

Listening to Miles’ innovation can be interpreted as pure to the spirit of the music’s divine, but others might also say a distortion of music from hell.

It is evident through Miles Davis that we can observe a new meaning for innovation. He truly showed- throughout his career- that he is an evolving human who can stretch the capacities of his brain to give birth to new thoughts and possibilities. Innovation is then not a new idea or invention but rather a way of life. To think about life with no boundaries, no comfort zones, and no regrets is derived from his fearless attitude. Miles Davis inspired, and taught many musicians of today what it means to stand out and be unique, and to improvise beyond what you can think of can further explore about your own self. Because of Miles’ broad influence on music, that we as listeners or performers form our own inference as to what music really is about for ourselves and not for others. It is then as artist or the whole humankind that we keep creating and innovating if we stop thinking about what is “there” and rather produce what is “not there.” Bautista 9

Sources: Bautista 10

Davis, Miles. “So What.” Kind of Blue. Miles Davis. Julian “Cannonball” Adderley. John ​ ​ Coltrane. Bill Evans. Wynton Kelly. Paul Chambers. . Columbia Records.

1959.

Davis, Miles. Miles Smiles. Miles Davis. Wayne Shorter. Herbie Hancock. Ron Carter. Tony ​ ​ Williams. Columbia Records. 1967.

Davis, Miles. Bitches Brew. Miles Davis. Wayne Shorter. Steve Grossman. Bennie Maupin. Joe ​ ​ Zawinul. Chick Corea. . Herbie Hancock. John McLaughlin. .

Ron Carter. Harvey Brooks. Lenny White, Jack DeJohnette. Billy Cobham. Don Alias.

Jumma Santos. Khalil Balakrishna. Bihari Sharma. Airto Moreira. Columbia Records.

1970.

Gridley, Mark C. “The Studio Recordings Of The Miles Davis Quintet, 1965-68.” Notes 68.4 ​ (2012): 767-770. Academic Search Complete. Web. ​ ​

Natambu, Kofi. “Miles Davis: A New Revolution In Sound.” Black Renaissance/ Renaissance ​ Noire 2 (2014): 36. General OneFile. Web. ​

Smith, Christopher. “A Sense Of The Possible: Miles Davis and The Semiotics Of Improvised

Performance.” TDR (Cambridge, Mass.) 3 (1995): 41. General OneFile. Web. ​ ​ ​ ​