By Arya F. Jenkins
photo: Britannica
There came a pivotal moment with
“Kinda Blue,” Miles Davis’s improvisational masterpiece after which
Everything changed for the artist who
Always strove to reflect the times
Nothing so much personified Miles’s
Smooth personable voice
Intractable cool and tenderness as that album
It had already made a splash and
Miles must have felt on top of the world, even untouchable
When the famous incident at Birdland occurred
Challenging Miles’s belief in a freedom he must have felt
His music had already earned
The experience of getting beaten up by a white cop for nothing
Embittered him durably even as he continued stretching his own
Artistic limits, creating fresh compositions
The experiments that followed moved people to marvel at how someone
Who had gone from begging for a dollar then fifty cents then a cent in order to cop drugs
Who had almost died going cold turkey from heroin who
After falling asleep doped up at the wheel of his Lamborghini had literally crashed
Time after time digging his own deep dark existential holes
Could keep emerging with such a gift
Only a superman
Someone innovative enough to place
A straight mute on the bell of his horn while playing in order
To deliver the truest sound in his unique voice
Changing jazz forever could do that
Miles treated music like his women –uncompromisingly
Saying to dancer and muse Frances Taylor when he met her,
“Now that I’ve found you I’ll never let you go.”
He did let people go his priority being jazz
Which he alone allowed to breathe and develop
Shaping and influencing musical time
Evolving the freedom that was neither in his life
Nor the world
Miles has been dubbed many things
Personifier of cool
Voodoo priest
It’s been said he wasn’t interested in anything or anyone but himself
But he was immersed in what was happening in the moment
Which drove him artistically
The women he chose, especially Frances, also actress Cicely Tyson
And painter Jo Gelbard, his accompanists in life
Did what they could to help him thrive on and off the stage
After “Kinda Blue” Miles’s musical bravery and inventiveness continued
But the love like Frances slipped away
Writer John Keene said once that art evades time
At its best Miles’s music made love to it and transformed it
Which brings me to duende that still grace of performance that Miles represented
The moment in the ring when the bullfighter stands poised, alert, and
Elegantly raises his red cape for the charging bull like
The man with the trumpet blowing a note
That takes hold and never lets go of the audience.
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