Post 6: Miles Ahead and Beyond
Miles Davis is without a doubt one of the most important and influential musicians to ever live. He was able to stay relevant for his entire career and has continued to be a tremendous influence on music even after his death because of his respect for the music. He put bands together out of his sense for musicianship and they would become just as highly revered as him and would innovate and expand on music in whole new ways. What created this environment, was his openness and willingness to change and adapt, respect for music and musicality, his individuality, and respect of his own vision which makes him such a highly regarded musician.
Because of Miles respect for his own truth and vision and openness to change, he never strayed from himself which led him to expand as a musician and reach new audiences for the sake of musicality. When change comes about, you can either fear it and try and deny change, or you can welcome it. Welcoming change leads to growth and it often shows in musicians’ work. Sometimes they welcome change out of their own narcissism and desire to become a star but Miles Davis is someone who welcomed change out of his sense of change and growth or where he felt the music should go. For instance, something like 1959’s Kind of Blue, it has an acoustic instrumentation, and has players influenced by bebop and by music up to 1959, whereas, Dark Magus 1974, has electric instrumentation, long jam type songs, and musicians who are more funk oriented such as ex Stevie Wonder bass player, Michael Henderson. Of course, he’d change over the course of a decade but he changes MULTIPLE TIMES over that period of time, and just like Coltrane, the music becomes less “commercial” the further you go (at least until Miles made his come-back in the late 70’s).
You expect the music to change over the course of a decade and maybe even get more commercial especially after Kind of Blues’ success, but it doesn’t get more commercial because his intention wasn’t to be highly revered and respected to make it rich to boost his own ego, it was to be a musical musician. Miles quit playing ballads when Michael Henderson was in the band and that’s because the Funk musicians in his group weren’t familiar with Jazz and he didn’t want to hear them mess up ballads which were his favorite. That is respect for the music; not playing your favorite songs because you know it won’t work well. It isn’t disrespectful but highly respectful of others limits and overall musicality of the group sound. If anything, He even went in a more funk direction to reach the Black youth which he felt he was straying from by opening up for the Grateful Dead at Rock venues such as The Fillmore West. His music didn’t change so he could achieve further commercial claim even in that instance, it changed because he felt the music should go that way, he was inspired/influenced to, and because he wanted to.
What came first for Miles was the music and his embracing of right minded change and difference and that level of focus and open mentality should be present in creating anything. Miles is the perfect example of someone who stayed true to the music that they were involved in and didn’t led the generalizations and commercialism of society askew him from his vision. Embracing change leads to innovation and change that you can only learn from if you embrace that change.
