Davis' modal stuff

[Rainer Straschill <moinsound@googlemail.com>]

Warning: I lost track of what I wanted to say in the first place
halfway during the following message - feel free to ignore!

            Rainer

Rick said (in that "book turned 100% feedback" thread):
"Davis embraced modalism because it finally gave the soloist control
over determining harmony as opposed to the comping instruments or the
'tune'"

I'll start by stating that for me, "Kind of Blue" is one of the most
overrated works in music (together with the entire catalogue of W.A.
Mozart, the later Richard Strauß operas, anything by Django Reinhart
(sp?) and the majority of Jarret's solo work, to name just a few
things).
Now that I've gotten your attention ;)

There had been, at that time in jazz, different approaches in trying
to, as Rick puts it, "give the soloist control". One of them was the
modal approach, which basically was bebop with fewer chord changes.
Another approach, and in my opinion a much more powerful one, was that
of Ornette Coleman, namely to throw out any harmony instruments
altogether.
This brought the harmony-based structure of jazz down to its essential
building blocks: the superposed two-voiced structure, as apparent in
the (non-polyphonic and two-voiced polyphonic) work of J.S.Bach. At
any given moment, both soloist and bass player would make a statement
in continuing their individual melody lines. Each resulting interval
could then be seen as defining a chord, and be understood that way be
either player, but not necessarily equally (as this is an
under-determined concept).
(It is noteworthy that in his later work in that period, Coleman would
move away more from this "underlying harmony" concept - but it is
present a lot on albums as e.g. "This is our music").

Davis himself chose another, much more stripped down of his "bebop
with fewer changes" approach, and that made sense. To quote from the
liner notes to Agharta: "I would try exploring one chord with this
band, one chord in a tune, getting everyone to master these small
little simple things like rhythm". Obviously, Davis at that point had
left the concept of harmonic progression, already stripped down on
"Kind of Blue", left behind completely.
What always strikes me as odd that during this period of his work,
Davis would most of the time work with two to three chord instruments
(first keyboards, then guitars).

So, there's the concept of reducing harmony to only one chord - by
using three harmony players. Or to have highly plurivalent harmonies -
by using no harmony player at all.

It's interesting to see that for the jazz world, the only one of those
three approaches which had a lasting and widespread impact was that of
the modal playing. It's obvious that a concept of only one chord does
not work well with the still very bop-influenced (in its use of drums
and bass) jazz mainstream. As for the superposed two-voicedness, this
simply puts a huge challenge on the bass player (and on the horn
player as well), so a lot of people simply don't seem to be willing to
rise to it.

And finally, it took more than twenty years for Davis' Seventies
approach to resurface in some (albeit still mostly percieved
"intellectual") works - Laswell, Kaiser etc. Perhaps another decade
later...

          Rainer

ps: "Dark Magus" is the Davis album to get! And of course, check out
the "Masqualero" version on "Black Beauty". Davis doesn't hit one
single not correctly - but it doesn't matter.