Sounds & Sights of Silva - June 26, 2023
Fearless (Miles' Version)
For a year’s worth of Tuesday evenings, I ran the soundboard for “Joe’s Jazz-O-Rama” on community radio. The host was a character – actually, many characters who were over-the-top self-designed on-air personas with questionable accents that helped introduce the music he was playing. This would be my first real introduction to the history of and culture around Jazz and despite the ridiculous circumstances, it was as thorough a lesson in the genre as one can casually receive without looking too hard.
I’d encounter Jazz here and there, seeing shows at the Blue Note in the West Village or the Blue Note in Tokyo or the Blue Note in Taipei (I believe the latter is related in name only, so I hope including it here won’t get them in trouble). Free shows in parks, friends doing open mic jams, the usual places you’d expect to run into those kinds of shows, really. I wasn’t looking hard.
Over time, I noticed Jazz influence in other music I would come to appreciate: Japanese City Pop, Afrobeat, Experimental Rock, for example. The way I started to prefer music that is challenging or that travels in unexpected directions absolutely originates from the feeling you get listening to improvised Jazz. I got tired of the same formulas, especially at a time when it literally pays for popular artists to conform to certain sounds. It’s gutsy, it’s thrilling, and despite whatever general stereotype of the genre exists, Jazz is one of the boldest forms of art.
I started listening to more music in the greater Jazz community – classics like A Love Supreme and Pharaoh Sanders, or modern releases by artists like Kamasi Washington all started to speak to me on some level. Jazz became ingrained in my own music taste in this way, or rather, I began to realize that Jazz’s imprints are everywhere, if not through the music itself then in its ethos and attitude and sensibilities.
The newest Third Man Records Vault release Fearless, a live recording of Miles Davis at the Fillmore East in March 1970, arrived on my doorstep this week, perhaps as unexpected as my ears ringing the first time I heard Bitches Brew when Joe lowered the tonearm and dropped the needle into the grooves of “Pharaoh’s Dance” a decade ago. These shows, opening for Neil Young & Crazy Horse, came out not too long before Miles would release Bitches Brew, in fact, and as the Third Man website describes, these new creations from Miles Davis set the stage for rock music like The Stooges’ at-the-time-soon-to-be-released Fun House. This isn’t Miles Davis adapting for the crowds he’s playing to, whatever Steve Miller Band fans would have been into at the time (lovin’ your peaches and shakin’ your tree), it’s a head-on collision with those expectations. His music was the definition of transcendent.
Legendary Japanese musician Ryuichi Sakamoto, who passed away while I was on my trip to Tokyo, discussed creating music for a society accustomed to hearing music everywhere they go, particularly in the always-on soundscape of Japan (as I witnessed in little speakers hidden in the sidewalks of quiet towns around Mt. Fuji). Something familiar to draw them in, then something ambiguous in texture, tone, and meaning to send the listener on a journey of their own. It’s a courtesy – nay, a respect – to the musician themself and to the listener. This is how I comprehend what it means to appreciate Jazz.
For the latest episode of my radio show Friend From A Big City, I featured international jazz and fusion selections, including tracks from Miles Davis’ Fearless recordings, Ethiopiques, Masayoshi Takanaka and Ryo Fukui from Japan, and more. Listen above or at this link.