Music and its Environment

“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.