This is what interested me the most about this chapter. It is said that great minds think alike. If this were true, shouldn't we expect that Davis rose to fame with those he admired? "Started from the bottom, now we're here," right? Wrong. Chapter two explains this discrepancy and in doing so, illuminates a side of jazz I never saw before taking this class. Another example:
Davis tells us of a trumpet player named Levi Maddison. Davis recounts that he was the "star pupil, and man he was a motherfucker...St. Louis was a great city for trumpet players and Levi was one of the baddest, if not the baddest...His trumpet was an extension of him"(Davis, 34). Yet despite the regard that one of the best holds for him, the all-knowing Google reveals nothing about Mr. Levi Maddison. Davis is quick to explain: Levi was put in a mental institution.
Though Levi's demise is more an issue of bad genetic luck than social inequality, it nonetheless reminds the reader (and aspiring jazz musician alike) that music is secondary to living. While Davis and his friends were probably the best of the best, the only ones who made it as artists were the ones who survived. Pair Levi Maddison's story with that of Duke Brooks, the Ellington imitator who died riding a freight train, and suddenly my understanding of jazz has been reworked.
You see, before I took this class I had no idea how jazz developed. I assumed innovation came out of the grandmasters of the art sitting around proper studios, blowing their horns, and striking their pianos, and plodding a beat along with their drum sets. I didn't realize the importance of the street. In this way, I have come to see jazz much differently than any other genre. More than any other art, jazz emerges directly from the people who are just trying to live, not necessarily the academic musicians. More than anything else, it is a direct expression of life itself. Often, as Davis has portrayed it, the musicians who succeeded were not necessarily the smartest or the fastest or the most popular visionaries. Sometimes they just happened to be the ones who survived, and in this act of surviving there was always some inspiration for the next piece.
For jazz musicians, Jazz was a balance between allowing music to define their lives and allowing their lives to define their music. That is the strongest point I have taken from this class.
I think what struck me most about your commentary was what you said about the street; I'd forgot to work that into my own response, but it's true. Jazz, moreso than in almost any other medium, relied on communities coming together and just jamming, rather than formal "concerts" in grand halls and such. It was a social sort of music, which I think distinguishes it from the other forms of its time; it truly was alive in its own way.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy your take on this. I thought it was interesting too in the autobiography how almost none of the musicians Miles praised in his childhood grew into success. It most definitely takes a certain type of person to maintain their discipline, ambition, and have enough luck and social savvy to thrust themselves into success as an artist. I'm not sure if this is unique to jazz though as you put forth. I think that because we have been studying jazz through the lens of a black studies class, the struggles that these musicians, due to race and societal prejudice, have become abundantly clear. But as professor Stewart has said "pressure creates diamonds", and I would imagine that if you look for it, you could find very similar struggles in the lives of most successful artists.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you transitioned smoothly from talking about the points that stood out in Davis’s autobiography to what knowledge you acquired by taking this class. The fact that you capture the overarching themes featured in the autobiography rather than one specific feature really allows your blog to encompass the full scope of ideas that this class embodies. Nice work, Bryan!
ReplyDeleteI thought that you did an excellent job discussing Miles Davis and his career. I also found it very amusing that you were able to include a Drake quote in the second paragraph.
ReplyDeleteI completely related to your final paragraph on jazz and its development. I also had the same understanding as you did. I didn't understand how jazz developed and how jazz began and how it transformed through time.