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So I heard Miles saying in an interview that white musicians seem to lag behind the beat, for whatever reason. What do you think about that, is he right, is there some cultural background contributing to the phenomena, if there is such...
Last edited by aleksandar; 05-15-2018 at 04:18 PM.
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05-15-2018 03:02 PM
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Maybe Miles was hitting the white powder a bit?
Swing is about playing with the beat, to my ears ... lagging and rushing.
Is he right? I don't think so.
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You can't take much of what Miles Davis said in interviews seriously. I don't believe there is any racial aspect to musicianship one way or another.
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i wonder if he was trying to be metaphorical
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If that's the case, it's got a lot of validity regarding the last 100 years or so...
Originally Posted by joe2758
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I think Lester Young holds the record for lagging behind the beat...
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Yeah I find it puzzling.
But Miles maybe was hearing the rhythm differently?
Playing behind is approximation. Swinging players are exact.
Inaccurate 'behind' 'loose' playing does not swing, it's a caricature of hipness. A hip player knows the difference intuitively.
Difference as I understand it - European rhythm is has the beat as the structural basis. Jazz reverses that at least a little - the upbeats are structural.
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I find there is a smidgen of truth to it in my personal experience. Some guys just naturally feel it a bit behind the beat, that's where they like it. However, many do have to be on their game to stay right on top of the rhythm on some tempos, or they sound like they are dragging, even though the tempo is not slowing.
Also some guys, when you want them to be right on the beat, they tend to speed up for some reason. I say it's cultural, not race.
I believe the more often you play, and with more people, you'll have experienced it every so often, IMO.
*This whole premise is based on jazz/blues musicians and not trained classical players.*Last edited by cosmic gumbo; 05-16-2018 at 01:21 AM.
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Miles was an enigma. He said some things for effect, and other stuff because he'd been through so much crap as an artist, and as a Black man who happened to be rich.
Here's my all time favorite Miles interview. He shows more of his inner being than usual. And after chatting with Dick Cavett, he plays "Tutu" on trumpet, filling in on keys during the guitarist's amazing solo. Cool stuff.
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Huh, that's funny. I've noticed a lot of white folks playing right on the beat in symphony after symphony. I have also noticed very few black folks in the symphony. So what are we supposed to make of that?
Regarding the OP, if there is something to this theory it's probably more culture than race. OTOH we don't know everything about race yet, even though some think they do.
The truth is that we don't know everything about hardly anything, and that certainly includes the human body and brain.
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But of course it's culture and not race. I didn't even mention "race" as such. When I use terms like "black" and "white", I have culture in mind. Originally Posted by Jazzstdnt
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I understand, that makes a lot of sense to me. Originally Posted by aleksandar
But that interview was American, and in America a lot of people see things only through a prism of race.
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Jeeze. You can see the condescension and scorn he feels for being subjected to this "interview". This is not what he would say were he talking to peers. This is Mile's "interview" face.
White musicians play behind the beat I don't know why. He's probably thinking of playing with Sco who lives in a pocket back there. That's nothing compared with Dexter. Oh yeah, maybe Miles looked at Dexter's lighter complexion and said "Oh he must be white underneath cuz he plays back there"... NOT.
Interviews like this are to be taken with a huge grain of salt, especially when it comes to Miles. Anybody who knows the backstage side of Miles knows what he felt and lived was often a long way from what he said at the innane goadings of interviewers adept at thrill manipulation and fishing for a juicy sound bite.
I really can imagine the 20 minutes following that interview. He's talking to some musicians. They say "Can you believe that guy and that question about the way 'black musicians hurt more?' and he'd be saying 'He's so STUPID'..." I can hear his voice.
Interviews like this. Read between the lines. Interviewer and interviewee, both playing a game. Especially when it comes to smart musicians and innane questions.
David
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Jazz student is on slippy territory with the classical time feel thing lol that’s the flame war that launched Adam Neely that is.
I would say from my own experiences performing in large scale core repertoire works with bands like the London Philharmonic and so on conductors like Bernard Haitink etc, that professional orchestras (and good amateur choral groups) do indeed perform way behind the beat of if by ‘the beat’ we mean the conductors baton.
Some conductors such as Esa Pekka Salonen have aimed to retrain orchestras to play on the beat, and when you think of his repertoire (20th century rep and contemporary) that makes sense.
Also early bands play often without a conductor so their corporate timefeel is the issue, and I think their conception of time is more like jazz or pop.
(Anyway I do think it is possible to have good time in a classical sense - metronomic subdivision, sensitive rubato etc - and still be totally at sea when it comes to a jazz conception of time. You see it all the time.... but that’s not really that relevant to the op.)
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Yeah I have to agree.... I think that’s what’s going on.... Originally Posted by TruthHertz
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Btw the idea that genetics has a bearing is pretty risible on an intellectual level
Last edited by christianm77; 05-16-2018 at 08:38 AM.
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That is; while I can accept musical talent is a phenotype and even a strong sense of pulse, the placement of ones rhythm in this or that musical style is a little more of a stretch.
I put it in the same category as homeopathy and Deepack Chopra.
EDIT: ha this got me thinking further....
actually by its definition I guess pretty much anything is a phenotype. We might call music itself an extended phenotype I suppose.
However, it’s a murky term. Nature versus nurture is always tricky to separate, and I think there’s a complex interaction between the two from my anecdotal experience. Some people (of various backgrounds and ethnicities) simply seem to have good time innately (not me I might add) even if they are not able to play an instrument very well.
In terms of how they play the beat? Well maaaaybe - but experience counts for a lot more. Playing for 40 years in an orchestra will shape your musical identity differently from playing in a funk band.
OTOH historically people have looked to correlate one phenotype with another in a manner that has nothing to do with actual real genetics. The interviewer above, for instance.
Why they should choose to correlate in particular one easily observable phenotype to various questionable others is probably best understood from a societal perspective.
Miles decided to yank his chain....Last edited by christianm77; 05-16-2018 at 09:17 AM.
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Well, certainly I didn't post the thread as a cliche "black-slavery-hurt-blues", and Miles was spot on when he told the "my father is rich, and my mom's good looking . I can play the blues, but I didn't suffer, nor I intend to suffer" anecdote. However, that line: "white musicians play different" intrigued me. From a European point of view, I do notice though, slight difference when a black musician is playing the blues for example. They accentuate differently somehow, maybe just like the way that African Americans talk slightly different than the Americans of European origin.
So to stress once more - I did not intend to imply anything racially offensive. As a matter of fact, as we all know jazz is one of the perfect examples of cultural interchange, globally.
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An example of black vs white jazz guitarist - Wes and Joe Pass. Though to me Wes sounds like playing more loosely, while Joe is on the beat, but swinging it.
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I didn't get that (not that I really know as a white dude)... And think the speech reference is really deep.... Speech and music are really interlinked.... Originally Posted by aleksandar
If anything the OP goes to show how language around race has changed.... These days that interviewer would be looking for a new job.... Probably end up as a YouTube pundit :-)
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Forget about race people. Listen to the music. Forget about what this person or that person said. I think Joe Pass swings like a mother. Oh, and Wes Montgomery too. Mary Lou Williams ain't too bad either. Mary McPartland is also pretty damn good in my book too...just to name a few. How 'bout that?
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GREAT solo is right... That's Bay Area Garth Webber and his screamin' Strat Originally Posted by Gitfiddler
I like when Miles invites him to get out into the spotlight...
Dick steps in it when he suggests that Miles stole his wardrobe from Liberace!!
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I'm glad you cleared up your question. I do agree with you in some cases, that things like speech patterns can effect the way some people play, and create the "weight" by which they interpret the meaning of swing. Originally Posted by aleksandar
But that's more a function of the individual's powers of interpretation more than any factour of blatant race origin.
I will share a couple of stories based on my experience that informed my opinions. There was a French bass player who was quite good. He got to play sideman to a lot of heavy cats who live and work in this town. But there was always something unsettling about his time feel. Nobody could put their finger on it. THen on one gig, Adam was on drums so everyone had to turn up and after the gig one of the musicians commented "I've never listened that closely to him, but he swings with a French accent!" and the other cats there said "That's IT!" And it was true, the unique linguistic plasticity of the beat that is evident in speech was present in his body, in his hands, in his touch.
Of course that's not a given. NOHP had a swing sense like an old time bebop player, as fluid and strong as anyone brought up in the tradition. George Mraz has European orchestral spot on intonation and scary arco chops playing classical, but when he plays jazz, it's right in the pocket and his inflections are right on. And he's pretty white.
About 20 years ago I was learning piedmont blues. I couldn't find a convincing teacher in the NorthEast. I thought If I'm serious, go to the South. I went to and lived in Durham NC where I met a man there who played like the real thing, was a grave digger when playing blues didn't pay the bills and shared all he could about his playing. Yes. It had that feel. That swing. That accent I recognized immediately. But as much as I asked him and watched him (I admit that a lot of what he told me I didn't understand, so heavy was his slow accented way of speaking), and I picked up some things and found it elusive.
THen one day it struck me: His playing swings in the exact same way his speech swings. Slow, fluid and muddy like a river. From that moment on, I heard the speech patterns, the rhythms, the feel of black Durham conversation in every note of Piedmont blues. It's instantly recognizable and it was the key to my changing my playing from "visiting" to "native speaker".
That's my experience anyway. I never once associated it with a race determined propensity, but I do know that different people have different meanings for "Walk the walk and talk the talk."
David
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Obviously it's because we think/feel through language and most of the time we can express ourselves best in our mother tongue. Like Mike Stern always points out, learning music is like learning a new language, and when you play a solo or a theme, you got to tell a story. That would be an interesting topic for a dissertation or something - the influence of speech metric, syncopation, vowel weakening etc. on music rhythm and phrasing.
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