My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | Page 39

38

As with many great musicians, Miles’s
unique, highly individual sound
on his chosen instrument — the
trumpet — would be the creative basis
and structural foundation of this new
cultural and aesthetic intervention.
His was a sound that embraced the
entire history of Jazz trumpet in its
meticulous attention to the demanding
technical and physical requirements
of the instrument yet also sought a
creative and expressive approach that
openly allowed for more subtle
emotional nuances to emerge from his
playing than were common traditionally
on trumpet. Miles brought a highly
burnished lyricism that was both deeply
introspective and fiercely driving
all at once. A major characteristic of
Davis’s playing was a new and different
way of phrasing in which a major
emphasis and focus on the relationship
of space to tempo and melody (and
the intervals between notes) became
the hallmark of his style. In the process
Davis dramatically redefined and
expanded the expressive and creative
range of the tonal palette and
instrumental timbre of the trumpet.
By shifting the traditional emphasis
from the heraldic and bravura functions
of the instrument to a more diverse
and expansive range of melodic,
harmonic, and rhythmic ideas Miles
was able to openly express the
anguished conflict, sardonic irony,
restless desire for cultural and social
change, and questing existential/
psychological anxiety of the modern
age. This intense attention to the
broader expressive possibilities of both
musical improvisation and composition
also turned the feverish search for new
forms and methods that characterized
the era into a parallel personal quest for
discovering a wider range of emotional
and psychological contexts in which
to play. The sonic exploration of the
complexities and ambiguities of joy,
rage, love, and melancholia was a major
hallmark of Miles’s style. Central to
Miles’s vision and sensibility was an
equally exhilarating appreciation for
the balanced expressive and intellectual

relationship between relaxation and
tension in his music. By focusing
specifically on the spatial and rhythmic
dimensions of melodic invention
Miles developed musical methods that
called for, and often resulted in, a
precise minimalist approach to playing
in which each note (or corresponding
chord) carried an implied reference to
every other note or chord in a
particular sequence of musical phrases.
Through a technical command of
breath control and timbral dynamics
induced by his embouchure and
unorthodox valve fingerings, Miles
could maintain or manipulate tonal
pitch at the softest or loudest volumes.
By creating stark dialectical contrasts in
his sound through alternately attacking,
slurring, syncopating or manipulating
long tones in particular ensemble or
orchestral settings (a technical device
Miles often referred to as “contrary
motion”) Miles was able to convey
great feeling and emotion through an
economy of phrasing and musical rests.
This rapt attention to allowing space
or the silence between note intervals
to dramatically assert itself as much or
more as the notes themselves created
great anticipation in his audience as to
how these tensions would be resolved
(or not). In this respect, the insightful
observation by the French Jazz critic
and music historian André Hodeir that
Miles’s sound tends toward a discovery
of ecstasy is a rather apt description
of Davis’s expressive approach.
What emerged from Miles’s intensely
comprehensive investigation of the
creative possibilities of the instrument
was a deep and lifelong appreciation
for the tonal, sonic, and textural
dimensions of playing and composing
music. These aesthetic concerns as
well as Miles’s innovative creative
solutions to the rigorous challenges
of improvisational and composed
ensemble structures alike in the modern
Jazz tradition soon revolutionized all
of American music and made Davis
one of the leading and most influential
musician-composers in the world
during the last half of the 20th century.

Davis’s widespread social, cultural, and
political influence didn’t end there
however — especially in the black
community. Miles also quickly became
a social and cultural avatar whose
highly personal combination of cool
reserve, fiery defiance, detached
alienation, intellectual independence,
and striking stylistic innovation in
everything from clothes to speech
embodied, and largely defined for
many, the ethos of ‘hip’ that pervaded
the black Jazz world of the 1950s and
early 1960s. But Miles, while remaining
very hip, at the same time also lived
and worked far beyond the insular
world of hipsterism and avant-garde
bohemia. He was unique in that his
stance was simultaneously existentialist
and engaged. As many observers, fans,
scholars, friends, and critics have noted,
Miles became, in many ways, what
the critic Garry Giddins called “the
representative black artist” of his era.
John Szwed, Yale University music
professor and author of a 2002
biography on Miles entitled So What:
The Life of Miles Davis speaks for a
couple of generations of writers, fans,
artists and musicians when he states
that by the late ‘50s, early 1960s…
Miles was becoming the coin
of the realm, cock of the walk,
good copy for the tabloids, and
inspiration for literary imagination.
Allusions to him could turn up
anywhere…Tributes to him
sprang up in poems by Langston
Hughes (“Trumpet Player: 52nd
Street”), and Grego ry Corso…
Young people ostentatiously
carried his albums to parties and
sought out his clothing in the best
men’s stores. In person, his every
action was observed and read for
meaning…A discourse developed
around him, one that bore
inordinate weight in matters of
race — Miles stories — narratives
about his inner drives, his demons,
his pain, and his ambition.
Invariably, his stories climaxed
with a short comment, crushingly
delivered in a husky imitation of
the man’s voice, capped by some
obscenity…He was the man.