Shortly after writing my introductory piece a few weeks ago, I came to realize the degree to which jazz is itself a highly referential form of music. So much so that some (and by some I am referencing Geoff Dyer, whose unique work, But Beautiful is well worth your time) have said it is almost pointless to try and write worthwhile criticism on jazz, the music is its own critical essay. What I mean is that many classic jazz pieces and great musicians were often loading their music with a sort of performative commentary on earlier work and artists they admired. So, in turn, the music is better criticism than anything anyone could write. This goes to explain why I am trying to frame this more as a beginner’s guide than my own critical contribution. It is a matter of covering myself somewhat. I merely hope to convey my enthusiasm and pique your curiosity.
Now that is out of the way, I figured it would be good to
get to one of the most clichéd jazz recommendations, Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. This album is good to get
out of the way early on because it is emblematic of some of the initial
difficulties facing the novice jazz listener. And, if my ultimate goal is to
provide a nice inroad into something people often find opaque, why not start
with one of the first names that comes to mind regarding American jazz.
There is a certain degree of historical weight attached to
many of the albums I have opted to focus on, it is hard to approach something
like Kind of Blue without all of the
critical weight that writers and other musicians have attached to it over the
last 50 years. On top of this, I am approaching these records decades after
their historical value has been well established. As with any classic album, it
is difficult to approach it without feeling somewhat obliged to hold it in
certain degree of reverence. In a certain sense, these become sacred, you could
interpret in a number of ways but you are obligated to agree with its place in
the cannon. I am not really interested in rewriting this cannon, my aim is again
merely to point you towards this record and the others I intend to cover over
the next several weeks.
Like Pet Sounds is
to pop music, Kind of Blues
reputation is very much well deserved. This album features, almost
miraculously, a band of the 20th Century’s most well-known/respected
jazz musicians. Miles Davis on trumpet, John Coltrane (!) on tenor saxophone,
Cannonball Adderly on alto saxophone, Jimmy Cobb on drums, Paul Chambers on
bass, and Bill Evans on piano. While the history of jazz features many
super groups and combinations of legendary players (we will be turning to Sonny
Rollins and Coltrane’s Tenor Madness next),
Kind of Blue feels special and the group
meshes together incredibly. They also recorded it live, over a few days and
only several takes. These musicians were so good and so much at the top of
their game, they could record this legendary work in much less time than it took
me to write a 1000 words on why I like it so much.
This record is also notable from a technical standpoint in
that Davis and his band employs an entirely different mode of improvisation and
composition, switching from a chord based format to a modal one. A discussion
of musical theory would be pointless for the purposes of this column and leave
me way out of my depth, but I want to make sure to note this decided sea
change. This was one of the first instances of this shift and it was one that
John Coltrane would go on to successfully use in his subsequent legendary
string of works in the ‘60s.
There is a lot of preexisting critical baggage around this
album and approaching it cleanly can be difficult, which brings me to a larger
point, and one we often forget when writing about and discussing music, art,
literature, movies, etc., how to form your own opinion on something determined
to be universally loved and respected, especially when this status was
determined decades before you were born. Also, how to attempt an honest
reconsideration of the work without being accused of not knowing what you are
talking about.
This has been the main difficulty in trying to navigate my
fandom of a variety of cultural interests, but nowhere have I been as timid in
forming an opinion as I have been with jazz. And yet, when Kind of Blue began to click with me, I saw that I was perhaps going
about it the wrong way. It was not necessarily about technical appreciation of
these pieces but of trying to respond to what was in front of you, the music
itself, to begin to seek out the expressive core at the heart of the record.
And here, we have quite a lot to work from because the record, for me at least,
works by creating a series of moods of generating a nonlinguistic response in a
way I had not previously experienced.
For Kind of Blue, the
obvious response/mood is a melancholy one (blue…get it). It is a record of
quiet reflection, each song evincing a calm that I have rarely experienced in
any other album. The way Davis’ trumpet echoes across each piece is one of the
few times I can allow myself to use the word beautiful to describe something, and
I honestly feel that there is no other way to describe it. “All Blues,” the
record’s penultimate track, is perhaps the best example. The percussion and
piano work together to create a lightness, a nimbleness that drives the song
despite the obvious sadness of the refrain. Even if the individual solos are
playful and almost bouncy, they still return to the mood of the refrain, there
is defeat in them, an extended sigh at the end of a long night. For me, this
became Kind of Blue, whose emotional
honesty is somehow able to bring closure within the reflective space it
creates.
This short circuiting of critical vocabulary proved an
opportunity to connect on a deeper level with the work itself. The closest
analog I can think of here is poetry where one doesn't necessarily have to make
sense of the poem’s content but instead react to the way the words and phrases
play off each other, and how they sound in succession.
This is, subsequently why my column on this album can only
circle the topic, I don’t think I can really write about the record and do it
justice. I encourage everyone to listen to it, as in all the records I will be
discussing, its effect on you may be totally different. If anything, these
pieces are my own way of moving from writing about music in a way that is
prescriptive towards something more informative, a means of sharing enthusiasm.
