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In A Silent Way was released, a whole new style of music was
born. Miles had turned the thing around, firmly and with great
elegance.
It comes out of the way he used to play, the way he plays
now. Long thematic lines, broken boldly. A fantastic sense of
the uses of silence (the holes being greater than some of the
parts), an interior logic to the lines that makes them carry on
even when no note is being played, a startling facility in the
lower register. It’s muscular music, punching, driving,
fantastically dramatic. (One device that Miles uses well, it has
been pointed out, is a variation on the old big band key-change
idea: stay in one place for a while, then shift forcefully for
maximum effect.) An even more important thing, historically
at least, is what he has done (beginning with In a Silent Way
and carrying through, going even further, with Bitches Brew,
Live at the Fillmore, and perhaps most notably of all, Jack
Johnson and Live/ Evil) with the whole idea of rhythm. He has
changed roles, to begin with. He is the soloist, but he is
rhythmically leading the other players, playing out of them
but simultaneously forcing them to play out of him. Bar lines
have no meaning anymore; Miles ' musicians (and the
multitudes who have since taken inspiration from what he
created) have been freed, not through anarchy but through the
’
intensely demanding acceptance of the most basic truths and
disciplines of music-making. These men play out of their own
bodies; their music is their pulse, their electricity, their
chemistry. The people Miles has chosen, worked with,
developed - Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, John
McLaughlin, Jack de Johnette, Hermeto, Gary Bartz, Airto,
Michael Henderson, Ndugu, and the rest - display a whole
new tradition of virtuosity on one hand. On the other, they
are among the most basic, honest, straightforward musicians in
the world.
The main thing, finally, though, is probably best found in
the immortal words of Herbie Hancock: “Miles,” he has said
simply, “can swing his ass off.”
Colman Andrews