John Coltrane has made life after death difficult for Miles Davis. John Coltrane’s late period has so influenced contemporary Jazz musicians that we have lost touch with the music of Jazz others. The Young Lions, notably Branford and Wynton Marsalis, attempted to bring back another “traditional” Jazz, but most listeners associate great jazz with the magnificence of “A love supreme” or with the out of this world instrumentation of a free-jazz Coltrane.
Miles Davis gave John Coltrane one of his first chances to play in a band but despite Davis’s success and that of his band mates like Herbie Hancock, Miles is now a style icon more than anything. His Jazz fusion has some adepts and his early stuff like “Birth of the cool” is rightfully respected but you don’t hear it being played by anyone. What matters now is edge and Miles, in the end, had so little compared to Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler. Few musicians today sound like they want to be Miles.
Robert Glasper is an adept of Jazz fusion and it is now safe to assume that he is also an adept of Miles Davis. He is one of the few major Jazz musicians today to be. He plays a Jazz soul that is pretty popular. He is perhaps the most well known son of Jazz fusion and has produced an album of very commercial sounding Jazz fusion. Unlike Miles’s music, his music does not seek to be avant-garde and addresses his society full on.
Glasper is not Miles because of this fact and is perhaps something new given the strong underground Hip Hop J Dilla-esque influence in his composure and his playing. Glasper can also be compared to an Archie Schepp, given his love of objectively cool rhythms to quote Theodor Adorno on Mahler (objective symphonies.) He has produced us an album that is a fun listen but listener beware: this is not Miles’s mind at work. This is Glasper: a new, great, Jazz musician. The album features singing that is not quite as good as Glasper’s playing.
Headline photo: Robert Glasper Trio
Author: Adolf Alzuphar
