Miles Davis' Poetic Sounds

I've been listening to Miles Davis's "Poetics of Sound: 1954-1959," and enjoying the sheer beauty of its lyricism and quiet power. That quiet power is derived as much from Miles's strengths as a musician, as it is from his understanding of many traditions and influences. I am thinking specifically of 'Concierto de Aranjuez', which I am listening to right now. You can hear Miles's understanding of the Spanish tradition and soul of this piece on a feeling level in the music. At the same time, there isn't any piece of music on this album that doesn't smoothly, contextually, relate to another. There is no disruption of sound, no lack of poetry. I include silence in that poetry.

This is an appropriate place to interject that, while bebop was a creative revolt against commercialism and restrictive elements in society and music, Miles's particular contribution is to the poetry of the medium. I am a lover of poetry and of the poetics in jazz. And Miles is the master. I also can't think of a more important quality missing in the sounds of music today than poetry. The commercialism has tackified so much that might have relevance, for example, flattening and simplifying the classical to fit genres like hip-hop.  The fusion of sounds is mostly just plain ugly. I am speaking specifically to what one hears on the radio just about anywhere you turn the dial on AM and FM, with the exception of a couple of stations, jazz-based or related.

I also feel that anyone wanting to return poetry to music, as opposed to lyrics, might turn to Miles Davis for instruction. Just as anyone who writes poetry in general should listen to Miles. He understood a great deal and is able to impart a great deal through his music, and equally through his silences. These are delicate things to state because we are not talking about facts, but intuitions and feelings, understandings beyond words that are translated nevertheless. And from which you grow in your own understanding of music and traditions.

So can we grow from silences in music such as jazz, just as from the silences or caesuras of poetry in which the reader/listener actually apprehends a multiplicity of meaning. And hear poetry and music, and derive meaning from it, even in the silence.

"The Poetics of Sound" might more aptly be named, "The Poetics of Silence" for this is what I believe Miles is playing upon, the meaning inherent in the pauses as well as the notes. There isn't a single cut that doesn't resonate with the listener on this theme.

The diverse listing on the album is as follows: "Solar"; the lilting, "It Never Entered My Mind," which is a Rodgers and Hart tune from the 1940 musical, Higher and Higher; "Bags' Groove," from a 1954 Davis recording. The 'Bags' reference is to vibraphonist Milt Jackson.

"When I Fall in Love," written by Victor Young and Edward Heyman, was a hit made popular by Doris Day in 1952 that was popularized by others as well, such as John Mathis, in 1959, and Etta Jones, in 1961.

"Dear Old Stockholm" is a Swedish folk song that was interpreted as well by Paul Chambers and John Coltrane, and Stan Getz, among others. 

Then there is the haunting American standard, "Bye Bye Blackbird," a tune, listeners' may forget, about a prostitute leaving the business and returning home to her mother, written and composed in 1926 by Mort Dixon and Ray Henderson.

"Milestones" is, of course, the title track from a 1958 album of the same name by Davis.

"It Ain't Necessarily So," with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin, is another American standard.

Then there is the ever-delicious "So What," from the seminal album, Kind of Blue, given a slightly mellower character here.

"Concierto de Aranjuez" was composed by Joaquin Rodrigo, originally for classical guitar. The concert intervals are intended to transport the listener by evoking sounds of nature via a dialogue among instruments, and also the instrument of silence. The inspiration for the Spanish composer's second movement is said to be the 1939 bombing of Guernica. The third movement is mixed metre, alternating between 2/4 and 3/4.

What is heard in the silence in Miles Davis' music is, alternately, the death of the old, and the birth of the new, whispering reframing of notes and phrases in a freer time and space.