{"id":80,"date":"2009-09-30T02:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-30T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jazztheologian\/2009\/09\/kind-of-blue-1-1.html"},"modified":"2009-09-30T02:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-30T02:00:00","slug":"kind-of-blue-1-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2009\/09\/kind-of-blue-1-1.html","title":{"rendered":"Kind of Blue (part 4–in conclusion)"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a> <\/a>"The parallels between the lives of African-Americans battling for their freedom as citizens and that of jazz musicians for their freedom from European harmony are too close to be mere happenstance."<\/strong><\/em> <\/p>\n

Jazz icon, Miles Davis, used to play with his back to the audience<\/strong>. To whites it was offensive. To blacks it was empowering. If a mere negro musician would dare turn his backs on whites in a racist society, then what else was possible? Same drinking fountains, no more lynchings, same schools…voting?<\/p>\n

"Harmonic complexity [had become] a hallmark of modern jazz." And "the use of harmonic structure had special, extramusical significance in jazz: it was the aspect of the music that was most deeply rooted in Europe…the use of chords comes out of the European harmonic system. And jazzmen were very aware of this."<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Kind of Blue<\/strong> was a breaking away from European musical standards. After seeing a dance troup from Africa and listening with amazement to the beats of the drummers, Miles emerged.<\/strong> He broke from European chord progressions as the best way to play jazz and went with a modal approach, based upon scales. And in a a 2 day recoding session with some of jazz's greats, Kind Of Blue<\/strong> was recorded. And jazz has never been the same. <\/strong>"it was voted one of the ten bet albums of all time–in any genre–and it is the only jazz album ever to reach double-platinum status….it is also a watershed in the history of jazz, a signpost pointed to the tumultuous changes that would dominate this music and society itself in the decade ahead."<\/p>\n

There was another reason<\/strong> why he played with his back to his primarily white audiences. In his autobiography he says that by turning and facing the band, he could listen better, read their cues and ultimately produce a better musical experience for the audience. Miles converged.<\/strong><\/p>\n

How amazing is that! Inspite of his disdain for those who wouldn't even use the same restroom with him, he also sought to give them a gift.<\/p>\n

(Quotations above are from Eric Nisenson's fine book, "The Making of Kind of Blue)<\/span><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

"The parallels between the lives of African-Americans battling for their freedom as citizens and that of jazz musicians for their freedom from European harmony are too close to be mere happenstance." Jazz icon, Miles Davis, used to play with his back to the audience. To whites it was offensive. To blacks it was empowering. If…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-finding-the-groove","category-jazz-theology"],"yoast_head":"\nKind of Blue (part 4-in conclusion) - The Jazz Theologian<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/2009\/09\/kind-of-blue-1-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kind of Blue (part 4-in conclusion) - The Jazz Theologian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\""The parallels between the lives of African-Americans battling for their freedom as citizens and that of jazz musicians for their freedom from European harmony are too close to be mere happenstance." 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Author of Finding the Groove: Composing a Jazz-Shaped Faith (Zondervan) and the upcoming, Strange Fruit: The Cross as a Way of Life (2011). Founder of Project 127, a ministry dedicated to seeing the day when there are no children waiting for homes in Colorado's foster care system. Robert deeply desires to see the body of Christ mobilized to serve the least of these. The poor, the down and out, the disenfranchised and disabled, those deemed unimportant and the unborn. He believes that God loves all people yet he has a special heart for the poor and the poor in spirit, the miserable and the marginalized. A Contributing Editor for Leadership Journal and Urbanfaith.com. He acquired a B.A. in Bibilcal Studies from Colorado Christian University and a Master of Arts in World Christianity (Missiology) from Denver Seminary. Robert is married to the love of his life, Barbara, and they have six energetic children (3 boys & 3 girls--one bio, five adopted--two from Ethiopia). Friend of God...Passionate about the Body of Christ...Lover of this thing called jazz! Please visit Jazztheologian.com for contact info., speaking schedule, videos, Facebook and Twitter.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/author\/rgelinas"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/79"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jazztheologian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}