Today’s track: In a Silent Way/It’s About That Time by Miles Davis from In a Silent Way (1969)

What a fitting way to conclude over fifty years of jazz history: a simple serenade, and my favourite jazz composition of all time. Some say that with the waning of hard bop’s ringmen and the deaths of avant-garde’s greatest supporters like Coltrane and Dolphy there was little left for jazz but to rust, but I disagree. I have decided to end the blog here because it was around the mid-1960s that the identity of jazz as both a music and a culture began to blur. The Civil Rights movement, Vietnam War, Marxism, feminism, pacifism, mysticism had all culminated to trigger major social upheaval for Americans, and commercial music was forced to ride that wave. Rock n’ roll would dispel of all politeness and become an uninhibited mutation called ‘rock’. Critics would turn their attention to Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and The Beatles as premier musical art, and jazz musicians who refused to remain relevant found themselves far from the mainstream (with a number of notable exceptions). From the 1960s, it seems, the jazz community achieved relevance in two ways: free jazz and fusion. Free jazz still persists today, often as an answer to musical and societal trends but existing comfortably in its vagueness. Fusion undergoes a parallel response, but instead stays faithful to musical convention and goes 50/50 with another genre.

In a Silent Way was Miles Davis’ response to the changing tides of popular music. He incorporated electric guitar and electric piano and mixed it like a rock set after the single recording session. According to Davis the performance is a collage of hours of separate single-layer takes that managed to blend blissfully. The result was an ambient, purging, purifying wobble through perfectly drawn-out passages: two tracks lasting nearly twenty minutes each. In a Silent Way is a jazz lullaby, but it would awaken contemporary jazz artists to the possibilities of rock fusion. Many of those advocates, not surprisingly, performed on the In a Silent Way session under Davis’ experienced wing: Wayne Shorter on soprano saxophone, Chick Corea on electric piano, Herbie Hancock on electric piano, and Tony Williams on drums to name a few. All four would earn status as revered fusionists, and would be some of the few jazz artists to achieve mainstream success in the coming years.

Miles Davis’ next album would be his last showstopper – and above all his rejection of jazz music’s rhythmic scaffolding. It was called Bitches Brew. The elaborate, dense and dissonant musical landscape was spread across two LPs, officially welcoming rock and funk to Davis’ palate. It retained, however, jazz music’s improvisational framework. It sold a half million copies in its first year, and Davis turned his back on jazz. During the 1970s Davis retreated from music altogether to focus on his visual art but returned again in the 1980s to explore jazz-pop fusion, like his 1985 track called Tutu recorded just six years before his death.

Other recommended tracks:

E.S.P – Miles Davis (album)

Miles Smiles – Miles Davis (album)

Nefertiti – Miles Davis (album)

Filles de Kilimanjaro – Miles Davis (album)

Bitches Brew – Miles Davis (album)

For its first 30 years the story of jazz follows a relatively linear thread: New Orleans, then New York, then swing, then bebop, then cool jazz. The tale then splinters into cool jazz and hard bop during the 1950s, and modal jazz extends from that. In the 1960s soul jazz, post bop, Latin jazz, free jazz and fusion all simultaneously swell and the expanding sub-genres become difficult to keep track of. Beyond the 1960s this trend becomes even more pronounced and the definition of jazz dilutes even further: funk jazz, acid jazz, punk jazz, jazzcore, acid jazz, nu jazz, jazz rap. As a writer I start to drown. I feel that 1969 is an ideal departure point for me, as by the 1970s jazz in its ‘purest’ form no longer existed and had largely embedded itself into piles of other growing genres.

Here are a few examples:

FUNK – blends jazz, soul, and R&B: Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag by James Brown (1965)

LATER SOUL – solo at beginning at 4:40: Move on Up by Curtis Mayfield from Curtis (1970)

AFROBEAT – blends traditional African rhythms, jazz, highlife, and funk: Zombie by Fela Kuti from Zombie (1977)

HIP HOP – rock, R&B, soul, jazz, signifyin’: Excursions by A Tribe Called Quest from The Low End Theory (1991)

This blog became much longer and more involved than I anticipated, but I suppose the moral was in the process – jazz is abstract, complex, and something not easily understood or explained. There is an ocean of jazz out there with a monstrously deep trench – but it’s worth it. For those who get to know it, jazz is almost unanimously adored. I, for one, consider it among the most enriching discoveries of my life, and I hope that those who kept up find themselves feeling the same way, or least feeling like they’ve learned something. I’d like to thank everyone for reading along over the last month as I pumped out thousands of words and hundreds of recommendations. It was heaps of fun, and I truly appreciate everyone’s interest and time. Happy jazzing!

D. Stuart

Play me off, Wynton.