“What we did on Bitches Brew you couldn't ever
write down for an orchestra to play. That's why I didn't write it all out, not
because I didn't know what I wanted; I knew that what I wanted would come out
of a process and not some prearranged shit. This session was about
improvisation, and that's what makes jazz so fabulous. Any time the weather
changes it's going to change your whole attitude about something, and so a
musician will play differently, especially if everything is not put in front of
him. A musician's attitude is the music he
plays. Like in California, out by the beach, you have silence and the sound of
waves crashing against the shore. In New York you're dealing with the sounds of
cars honking their horns and people on the streets running their mouths and
shit like that. Hardly ever in California do you hear people talking on the
streets. California is mellow, it's about sunshine and exercise and beautiful
women on the beaches showing off their bad-ass bodies and fine, long legs.
People there have color in their skin because they go out in the sun all the
time. People in New York go out but it's a different thing, it's an inside
thing. California is an outside thing and the music that comes out of there
reflects that open space and freeways, shit you don't hear in music that comes
out of New York, which is usually more intense and energetic.”
-
Miles the Autobiography,
300
Coming into this course,
I felt that I knew a good amount about jazz, especially for someone of my
generation. I had played trumpet since childhood with jazz as my favorite genre
to play, which had led me to listen to the music of many of the greats, with
Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong, and John Coltrane my favorites. I studied their
music for only its musical elements, and I think I had a decent knowledge of
jazz music through that lens. I had seen some of Ken Burns’ documentary about
jazz, and I had an idea of some names of musicians that would come up in the
class, and what they were known for.
While
the musical elements and the musicians are definitely important, I had never
considered the social context from which the music and the musicians emerged
before I took this course. I knew that jazz had begun in New Orleans, but I
didn’t understand why New Orleans had unique qualities that contributed to the
music there. I knew jazz was played in cities, but I had very little concept of
how those cities shaped the music.
The
quote printed above, for Miles, the
Autobiography, exemplifies the importance of the environment to the music,
and how jazz in particular is equipped to interpret its environment. Prior to
this class, I was drawn to jazz because of its improvisatory nature. Now, I can
understand how this quality of jazz allows its musicians to respond to what
they see, hear, and feel. This is why jazz in different cities has sounds that
are unique to those cities. Davis explains that through improvisation, the
music can be different on any given day, and that this may depend on the nature
of its surroundings, hence his explanation of California and New York having
different sounding music.
The
idea of music being in conversation with its environment was a new and
interesting idea for me during this course. I think this is key to understanding
how race, economic status, and other elements of the zeitgeist contributed to
jazz music.
Commented on Dalton Klock's blog.
