Miles Davis – Filles de Kilimanjaro – 1969

[Roland Bru]

Miles Davis is Jazz. If you do not like jazz, you will not like music by Miles Davis. If you are open to explore the possible merits of jazz, Miles Davis is a great place to start, for several reasons:
1. Everybody thinks he is very important
2. He hired many musicians who would end up as important jazz artists or start other groups (Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, Tony Williams, Herbie Hancock, the list really goes on and on)
3. He made some terrific albums.

I would go so far as to say that if you only want to buy one jazz album, you should buy Kind of blue, lounge music 1959 style, that has yet to be bettered. A nice follow up would be Bitches brew (1970), considered one of the starting points of fusion.

Filles de Kilimanjaro dates from 1968: no electric guitars yet but a time of transition all the same. Three songs (and an alternate take) with the Herbie Hancock / Ron Carter line up, two songs with Chick Corea and Dave Holland. This is exploring music. There are no melodies to speak off that you can sing along with. The titles do not mean a lot to me when I listen to it. The pieces may be born out of improvisation sessions, but they have been seriously structured. There is a great amount of attention to detail. Although loose, you get the impression the ‘songs’ could not have been played differently. Of course, Miles would go on to prove that this could be done (in fact they hardly ever sounded the same), but still this album remains a testament to the enormous talents of the players assembled for the sessions.