Sound Ctrl
| Miles |
| When you listen to music, aren't you also
"listening" to all the stuff around it, too? Imagine how important it is for
listening to music that you are able to experience musician's background, personality,
charisma, magnetism and everything else influencing his picture as a whole, his
superstructure. By the way, it doesn't apply the jazz alone. For the classical music it is
just more complex since the superstructure of a classical musician-composer
(musician-performer is only reproducing) is often so fuzzy and uncertain comparing to the
jazz musicians which majority belong to our century. Miles as an intelligent man by all accounts, must have become increasingly aware of the power of his personal charisma and significance of his music, especially in the later years as he watched his reputation grow over his declining trumpeting skills. Perhaps he said to himself "these people are hearing a lot more context than music, so perhaps I accept that I am now primarily a superstructure maker. My art is not just what comes out of the end of my trumpet or appears on a record, but a larger experience which is intimately connected to who I appear to be, to my life and personality, to the Miles Davis story." In that scenario, the music, the sonic part of it, could end up being quite a smaller part of the whole experience. Developing the superstructure, the package and further the delivery system, the fuel, the spin, the story - might itself become the art. Like fin cuisine and perfume... Professional critics in particular find suggestions about the superstructure objectionable. They have invested heavily in the idea that music itself offers intrinsic, objective, self-contained criteria that allow you to make judgments of worthiness. In the pursuit of "Absolute Value" and other notions (usually spelled with capital letters), they reject as immoral the idea that an artist could be "manipulative" in this way. It seems to them cynical and blasphemous. They want to believe, to be certain that this was The Absolute Truth, a pure expression of spirit wrought in sound. They want it to be "pure", “authentic” and “real”, but now they're getting the message that the great deal of what its worth is connected with how much they're prepared to take part in the creation or, as they call it, “fabrication” of a story about it. Disgusting! The critics wouldn't even dream of accepting that they, as all the others, actually are affected by the superstructure but they neglect to accept it officially. This is the reason why us, the musical pumpkin eaters and the sublime critics talking about the same performance are in opposition defending each his side of the non-existent barricade. I remember years ago when visiting India I was invited to a healing performance. An Indian shaman was treating sick people by apparently reaching into their bodies and pulling out bloody rags, which he claimed were the cause of their disease. It all took place in dim light, in smoky, obscure hut, after intense incantations and unbelievable. A Western team filmed him with infrared cameras most probably with the intention to show later at home that he was performing a conjuring trick. And indeed so. The crowd knew that he wasn't taking anything out of their bodies after all. So he was a fake, no? Well, maybe, but his patients kept getting better. He was healing by the superstructure making a mental space where people somehow got themselves well. The rag was just a symbol a prop. When Miles, with a trumpet as a prop, making a place where we, in our collective imaginations, could somehow have great musical experiences? I think so. Thanks, Miles, and thanks everyone else who took part, too. |
|
