:) I don’t hope to provoke any major argumentation or hard feelings :)
Personally I feel that jazz is such a broad description, it can mean so many different things to so many different people!
When I meet new people and it comes to musical tastes I will say I love jazz, and often they’ll scrunch their noses “oh I hate jazz”
It always reminds me of something my father said many years ago “I don’t like curry”. Which of course was kinda insane, because he loved curry, he just didn’t know it was called curry or had curry elements!
I talk about the above personal experience because I want to set the tone for the discussion here, as not having to decide what is and isn’t jazz, but in the context that it means something different to everybody. And wanting to discuss as a community what it means to each of us without that being “right” or “wrong”
I think for me, the first thing that made me connect to jazz, was it’s absolute defiance. So that’s what jazz is to me: defiance. It doesn’t mean it’s not other things too!
I really believe what made me fall in love with jazz was a song from The Flying Lutenbachers called Fist Through Glass. I could not stop listening to it… It was the first time I heard anything that just said fuck you. Like really just fuck you. And also that underlying the apparent dischordance and chaos, was a meticulously crafted statement. I didn’t know I was listening to jazz though!
While I do like his music very much, I’ve never really looked into his personal life, save for a couple YouTube videos.
Didn’t know he was an asshole. I’ll definitely have to look into his personal life more.
It’s just when someone says jazz, that’s who I think of. I like a lot of other types of jazz/jazz fusions as well.
Thanks for the info.
I tend not to get involved in the personal lives of artists, because I like the output not the drama
But Miles has a very interesting story… he grew up a very privileged kid, went to Juilliard and dropped out
Went on to pioneer modal jazz, which was revolutionary at the time… the concept that the entire jazz band was there to create musically, not just noodle around to support the “big solo”
Miles describe himself as a complete outsider who doesn’t even understand people, he doesn’t know what human relationships are
Not unexpected for a genius of his caliber, how on Earth could you possibly relate to other people when you’re that brilliant?