Yo Miles!

Yo Miles! The appellation chosen by this loose collective fronted by trumpeter Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith and guitarist Henry Kaiser is both apt and evocative. It is an argot affirmation, a transgenerational shout of acceptance and homage across the decades to the challenges laid down by Miles Davis when he began committing this ferociously beautiful music to tape in the early 70's. While producer Teo Macero's contributions to the structures constantly unfolding deep within Bitches Brew, On the Corner and Big Fun are now the stuff of mix-master/ DJ / beat-science legend, Davis, far from content with magnetic representation, began to use a similarly cinematic approach in his performances during this decade. Miles' "Dark Funk" is a music of vamps, occasional sparse riffs, encoded phrases leading to abrupt but seamless shifts in mood, tempo and group dynamic -- devices which Henry Kaiser calls the "70s Miles formula". Especially on their two Cuneiform releases, Sky Garden and Upriver, Yo Miles! has distilled and refined the evolutionary processes that made this music so innovative, exciting and difficult. Culled from a single marathon session, these two double disc sets present, in both micro- and macrocosm, a comprehensive re-appraisal of Davis' most challenging music.

The casual verbal agreement, made in Oakland, that was Yo Miles!' genesis is well documented, especially in interviews with Kaiser. Likewise, the group's aim to be more than just another tribute band, incorporating Smith's own compositions to then enhance Davis' own musical language, is also common knowledge. Yet the ways in which these two innovators approach the various philosophical underpinnings of Miles electric music could not be more different, or more complementary. Kaiser, having seen Miles' Pete Cosey / Al Foster band some dozen times, spoke with palpable excitement when he told me of the intellectual and raw emotional impact of those concert experiences. "Oh yeah, they were doing stuff they never did on the released music…", the guitarist's voice rising in delight as he described the mastery of tonal / melodic superimposition and transition achieved by that group at their zenith. Smith, a philosopher by training as well as inclination, eschews such technical description in favor of Davis' accomplishments in non-verbal direction. "It was the first time in his [Davis'] artistic life where he could have a forum in which to express everything he wanted to express and do it non-verbally, by utilizing the trumpet and by his own particular manner of creating music." Kaiser and Smith further cite rather different reasons for the violence with which this music was greeted, in large part, on its initial release. Smith puts it down to self-reflexive hostility on the part of audiences unwilling to re-examine their likes and ownership-induced biases, because "You can't reject art!" Kaiser's view is more practical. "The music had gotten away from a very white kind of jazz based on the popular song-form -- that was more Eurocentric; [Miles] changed to present something that was based on a more Afro-centric kind of logic. That was a very hostile scary thing to people who wanted the nice tame Miles in a tuxedo playing 'Round Midnight.'"

Both Kaiser and Smith, though, are vehement about the spontaneous nature of their endeavor. Nothing is rehearsed in a group sense. If negotiation takes place, it occurs on a musician -to-musician, "need to know" basis and not on a collective level, as in the form of band instructions. Smith's wah-wah experiments are similarly spontaneous and, consequently, assured, not amateurish or modish in any way. Overall, the goal is to keep the proceedings as fresh as possible in order to best serve Miles' compositional / improvisational formulae and the new directions in which these riff-and-vamp implications might lead. Arrangements exist -- witness the lush orchestration, courtesy of the Rova Sax Quartet, of "Black Satin Slight Return" on Upriver -- but these to are blueprints only, as much of and for the moment as is the collective improvisation that typifies these sets.

Smith's long-explored approach to rhythm, sound and silence, combined with Kaiser's equally thorough-going preoccupation with timbral and coloristic experimentation, ensure expansion and magnification of the minute details in each composition. Yo Miles!' treatment of "Great Expectations" seems to be a primer for the group aesthetics. On Sky Garden only its first half, a "Nefertiti"-esque study in melodic repetition and accompanimental variation, is treated directly. The semi-circular nature of the "Expectations" melody -- it ends on the pitch from which it began -- has broader implications in the Yo Miles! version, as the piece becomes a loosely palindromatic series of group improvisation and dialogue. The four dialogic sections all involve tabla virtuoso Zakir Hussain, an absolutely stellar choice for this project. While Badal Roy's tabla work on the Miles albums is pleasantly coloristic but often blurry, arguably to good effect, all of Yo Miles!'s work is about clarity. "Expectations" is written in seven, and Hussain matches wits perfectly with Steve Smith's (drums) and Michael Manring's (showcasing a fat tone and a very supple sense of funkiness on fretless bass) to drive the group improvisation sections. The dialogic (dualogic?) intro, interludes and post-lude, are of quite a different nature altogether. While motives from "Expectations" are referenced occasionally (notably, at one point, by Hussain's tabla!) the interplay is more rhythmically and melodically eclectic. The piece's opening dialogue, featuring Hussain and Wadada, illustrates perfectly Smith's views on the symbiotic relationship between sound and silence. "If you make an impact with a sound and you allow silence to precede it, it creates a greater expectation than if you fill that space with sound." His solo puts these comments into practice; each note jabs, bends, ebbs and flows with the certainty of its place, and again.

Hussain is the perfect foil. The second and third duets, both with tabla and sax, are somewhat more frenetic and metrically exploratory. The first of these, presumably with Greg Osby, builds to several post-tonal frenzies on the fringes of bop, while the second, apparently pairing the percussionist with John Tchicai, is a sinewy, slithery construct in which the soprano saxophone often sounds like a muted trumpet, conjuring and magnifying reminiscences of Davis' precognitive slides and moans. Another Smith / Hussain conversation, this one replete with stunning multiphonics, closes out the proceedings, rendering "Expectations" circular melodic structure both a kind of grammatical Möbius strip and a concise exploration of historical and geographical jazz innovation. The collective improvisation sections are far removed from the heavily effects-treated, swirlingly psychedelic mass that enveloped Big Fun's version of this composition. Each gesture is presented with the lucidity of a gem, and while keyboard work on the 70's recordings often became miasmic, Tom Coster's work here is as cleanly recorded as his ideas are developed, both on his solos and within his accompanying patterns. Kaiser's guitar work is tastefully distorted and bluesy, respectful of multivalently historical lineage without being the least bit overintrusive or self-indulgent.

"Great Expectations" is by no means the only track to receive this kind of deconstruction. "On the Corner Jam" gets similar treatment on Upriver, and both Cuneiform sets are programmed in such a way that each disc can be viewed as an extended suite. Not only is significant attention paid to contrast of all sorts, in the 70's Miles tradition, but unlike the 1998 Yo Miles! release, most of the tracks segue jump-cut fashion, not unlike live Davis releases such as Dark Magus or Black Beauty. The Smith compositions, mostly found on Sky Garden, mirror this process on a smaller scale; "Who's Targeted" slams headlong into drum-driven focus after the nebulous orchestral wash of "Miles' Star" only for the drums to fade into a momentarily static organ cluster. It is tempting to hear each Smith composition as an etude-like expansion upon one aspect of the "Miles formula", "Shinjuku"'s multilayered African funk being so reminiscent of Agharta's similarly aggressive vibe, but comparisons of this nature break down in the face of Smith's fluidly appropriate conceptions.

While much ink can be spilled on Yo Miles! interpretive and compositional take on the Miles method, Kaiser now says that as far as he's concerned, they've said all they need to say about Miles' own compositions. I wouldn't be the first to announce the tantalizing plan for Yo Marley! disc, but Kaiser deems the project highly unlikely. Whatever facet of musical culture Kaiser and Smith decide to explore next, it will be well worth repeated listening and extensive analysis.

For more information, see: Cuneiform Records.

~ Marc Medwin

Posted by marc on May 6, 2005 6:51 AM