Miles Runs the Voodoo Down

from the LP Bitches Brew, CBS Records, 1969



There are musicians who master the current style, and then there are musicians who create & define the very trends which others copy, remake, and react to. Miles Davis is among the minority of individuals making up the latter group, and this album marked a profound new direction for jazz music; yes, I know, if you’re a jazz purist you are already getting huffy about this choice and the previous statement, probably thinking to yourself, “…fusion is not jazz music…” Thing is, I’m not a “purist” of anything---that paradigm kinda smacks of the same overzealous dogma that annoys me about organized religion: too many rules made up by archaic assemblies. In any event, Miles certainly had both the reputation and musical chops to do his own thing; hell, by this date he’d already been performing jazz music in all its many styles and trends for well over 2 decades. As the ‘60s wore on, Miles and his assembled crews were straying farther and farther away from the old bop template, but this record divulged his then-current interest in rock and funk music like no jazz recording he had made before it. Recorded on August 20^th, 1969, this particular track keeps a heavy, earthy skronk rumbling underneath the entire session while Miles and the band take turns trading solos, a heady exchange between trumpet, electric pianos, and electric guitar that feels very much like the melodic embodiment of some voodoo spell. Virtually every single band member that played on this session went on to form their own successful fusion bands into the next decade: Chick Corea (Return to Forever), Joe Zawinul & Wayne Shorter (Weather Report), John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu Orchestra), Jack DeJohnette. Their interplay here is just incredible, riding waves of energy, losing restraint in unison. The jazz world was very split over this new direction, and remains so (albeit, to a lesser extent) to this day. However you may feel about that, there is no denying one thing: these are the sounds of a new zeitgeist in music being born.