Review of Keith Waters,The Studio Recordings of the Miles Davis Quintet: 1965–68(Oxford University Press, 2011)

Abstract

[1] For all the research on the social and cultural context of jazz, there is surprisingly little rigorous scholarly work that attempts to reveal what is actually taking place as the music unfolds. That is, very little analytical work engages the music as music, penetrating deeply into a close hermeneutic reading. Instead, we typically encounter lists of generalized characteristics, nebulously defined terms like modal and nonfunctional harmony, and critiques of Western notation's inefficacy in accounting for timbral and dynamic variation and nuances of pitch and rhythm (as if Western notation is at all sufficient for representing those aspects of Western music!). These discussions are often accompanied by startlingly severe attacks against jazz analysis, on the grounds that hermeneutic readings ignore the cultural, social, political, and racial conditions under which the music was made.(1) Of course, any approach that privileges aspect of a musical performance will necessarily be impoverished, but by avoiding close discussion of the music, we risk limiting our discourse to vague generalities rather than a deep understanding of the musical material. And it should be equally evident that a thoughtful, carefully considered investigation that reveals even some very small essence of a musical work will ultimately enrich our multivalent understanding of that work and the musical and cultural practice that gave rise to it.(2)[2] The Studio Recordings of the Miles Davis Quintet: 1965-68 marks an important contribution to the evolution of thoughtful, vigorous writing about jazz. Keith Waters, a veteran performer as well as a prolific jazz scholar, scrutinizes the studio recordings made by this seminal quintet, a group that Bill Kirchner describes on the back cover as one of the most important musical ensembles of the 20th century. Throughout, Waters strategically varies his analytical method, focusing on the aspects of a particular performance that seem noteworthy, structurally significant, or groundbreaking. At times he engages in revealing comparative analyses that describe relationships between the composers' original scores and the recorded versions. Elsewhere he takes the reader through close readings of improvised solos that might focus on motivic development, harmonic substitution, or rhythmic or metric ambiguity. He frequently engages interactions between players, especially during transitional passages in which improvised solo gives way to the next. He occasionally compares multiple versions of the same song in order to pursue questions about the nature of the relationship between composition and improvisation. Waters is always careful to engage delicate issues-composers vs. improvisers (13), individual vs. collective (17), process vs. product (74), improvisational epistemologies (54), and the quintet's historical position, especially vis a vis the avant garde (76-81)-in a way that should alert potential critics to the fact that he is aware both of the need for cultural, social, racial, and political sensitivity and of the crucial role these matters play in any serious investigation of jazz.[3] Given the complexity of this tangled web of musical and extramusical concerns, it is important to contextualize the methodology that will frame a close reading, and Waters does so expertly. He summarizes the ways in which each participant contributed to the quintet's repertoire and developed paradigm-defining improvisational strategies. He discusses the ways in which this music broke new ground on the terrain of post-bop jazz, describing the quintet's harmonic sophistication (including harmonic progressions not easily explainable in terms of tonal function), melodic development (manipulation of motivic cells, motivic expansion, and melodic paraphrase), rhythmic/metric complexity (especially hypermetric overlap and metric conflict), and formal innovations. Particularly noteworthy are passages in which attributes overlap, as in Herbie Hancock's solo on Madness. …