Miles Davis: The Unreconstructed Black Man in Modern Jazz

• In Event: 4373 - Cultural Studies

Abstract

This paper explores the public story of African-American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. Playing off black author Quincy Troupe’s declaration of Davis as an “unreconstructed” black man, I argue that Davis challenged in various ways a liberal colorblind ideology that dominated the jazz art world throughout his career. I show how Davis challenged the racial etiquette of the white jazz art world as well as its racial imagination. I show how Davis refused to show deference or remain silent in his everyday interactions in the jazz art world and in his presentation of self in interviews. These actions by Davis provoked a translation by white critics and journalist of a supposedly enigmatic, ill-tempered, even racist Prince of Darkness. This view of Davis revealed the social distance and distorted racial imagination of white members of the jazz art world in relation to black musicians. I also explore how the gender imagination in the jazz art world, especially the minefield of black male hyper-masculinity, articulated Davis’ selfhood and self-presentation as a race man provocateur. I show how the power of black hyper-masculinity, in the white and black racial imaginations in jazz and popular music, led to Davis’ complicity in perpetuating a hyper-masculine misogyny in his everyday life and in his public persona. I show, as Herman Gray and Clyde Taylor argue, how race and gender articulated a complex set of forms of resistance and complicity in the self-generation of black male artist’s “self-descriptive legend.”

Author

• Paul D. Lopes, Colgate University