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Career of Miles Davis

Near the end of the 1960s jazz trumpeter Miles Davis (1926-91) began to experiment with electronic instruments (primarily bass and piano) played by members of his groups. Within a short time Davis released two recordings, In a Silent Way (1969) and Bitches Brew (1969), that started a storm of controversy--although the latter record sold better than any album in jazz history. The problem as Davis saw it was that people were simply unprepared to listen to his new style of group improvisation because, first, it involved electronic instruments and rock beats and, second, it was too complex and unusual. But critics and fans who deplored the new direction complained that the music simply was not jazz, that Davis had "sold out" in order to attract the large white audience for rock music with a "fusion" of jazz and rock, and, in some cases, that his new music was a betrayal of his race and the great art invented and primarily played by African Americans.

The last of these objections to the music of that era, and to what followed in Davis' career, appears at first to contradict Davis' own image and his frequent assertion of the importance of race in jazz. In remarks made in a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, for example, he speculated on what would happen if, after sixteen years as a black man he was offered the chance to become white. Suicide, he said, would be his only alternative,

'Cause whites have knowledge but no rhythm. Classical music was invented because white people didn't have no rhythm, and they could write it and plan it and all . . . Brooks Brothers suit is all right, but I'm talking about the feeling (quoted in Breskin 47).

But Davis often made statements in which he seemed to contradict himself entirely. He reported in his erratic autobiography, for example, that in the early days he was amazed that his fellow jazz musicians,

wouldn't go to museums or libraries so they could check out what was happening. ...

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Career of Miles Davis. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 21:40, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1698150.html