What Was The Impact Of Miles Davis

It is impossible to think about the influence of jazz without thinking of Miles Davis. He was a game changer and innovator who altered the direction of jazz and transformed the musical landscape more than once. Miles Davis changed the course of jazz in result of his experience with oppression and prejudice. He represented a model for future musicians, and granted listeners a glance into the world of an oppressed American through his music. Miles Davis was a key player in the evolution of modern jazz. In the 1940’s he participated in the bebop craze, then initiated the cool jazz era in the 1950’s. Bebop involved a higher register and note fueled playing while Miles favored the middle register, with longer and less frequency of notes, and a

Not only did Davis serve as an architype for upcoming musicians, he exposed his audience to the realities of an oppressed American by way of his music. Growing up he had to work harder than his white peers to get the same chance, and he took note of this. According to the book, Miles Davis: the definitive biography, Davis commented on using injustice as his motivation, “It made me so mad that I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn. If I hadn’t met that prejudice, I probably wouldn’t have had as much drive in my work” (Carr 6). Injustice made a profound influence on Miles. During the civil rights movement Miles Davis became a voice for the black community. Because of Davis’s initiative to deliver music that would bring strength and truth to the African American community, jazz music had become a symbol of power and strength instead of “black music.” In a book by Ingrid Monson she speaks about the relationship between the civil rights movement and jazz: “the defiance and resistance of jazz musicians has often been confused with romanticized politics of style that views music’s relationship to the civil rights struggle as mostly symbolic. Here the defiant attitude of musicians…has been viewed as the heart and soul of the relationship between music and politics” (Monson 56-57). Miles Davis was a manifestation of the