Kind of Blue. No homo.
I read two articles about music today from Slate that I thought were worth sharing. First, from Fred Kaplan, comes an appreciation of Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” which comes on the 50th anniversary of its release. I first heard, and loved, “Kind of Blue” while taking a History of Jazz class in college and its been a regular in my iTunes rotation ever since. Particularly soothing when I’m trying to get work done or when my mind is elsewhere.
Anyway Kaplan really gives the background on the creation of the album and explains why it was so revolutionary as well as popular. This part of the explaination though, seems fairly simple:
So Kind of Blue sounded different from the jazz that came before it. But what made it so great? The answer here is simple: the musicians. Throughout his career, certainly through the 1950s and ’60s, Miles Davis was an instinctively brilliant recruiter; a large percentage of his sidemen went on to be great leaders, and these sidemen—especially Evans, Coltrane, and Adderley—were among his greatest. They came to the date, were handed music that allowed them unprecedented freedom (to sing their “own song,” as Russell put it), and they lived up to the challenge, usually on the first take; they had a lot of their own song to sing.
So basically great musicians made great music. Works for me.
The other Slate article covers a topic on pretty much the complete opposite end of the musical spectrum. Jonah Weiner wrote probably the longest article you’ve ever read on the term “no homo”. I’m no expert on hip-hop so I can only assume this was as complete an analysis as it seemed but I did enjoy this part:
A funny side effect here is that the no homo vogue doubtless encourages rappers not only to scrutinize everything they say for trace gayness, but to actively think up gay double-entendres just so that they can cap them off with no homo kickers.
That is pretty funny.
Holla at me