Cross-cultural communication （100）　

104) Miles Davis, toyed with by a different culture
In November 2020, I had an endoscopic sinus surgery for chronic sinusitis that had been troubling me for many years. It was at this time, in the hospital room, that I suddenly remembered the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. He did inhale too much cocaine through his nose, which caused a hole to form in his nasal septum. This anecdote was told to me by a Japanese doctor, who was a friend of mine when I was living in New York City (NYC) in the early 1980s and was also studying in New Jersey. (See Brooklyn Memoir (20))　　

After leaving the hospital, I was still a little weak from the excessive bleeding immediately after the surgery, so I was taking it easy at work and staying at home quietly watching Netflix (I joined in January 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic, and have been hooked ever since). I knew that Netflix had a good selection of documentaries as well as movies and dramas, so I decided to give it a try and searched for “Miles Davis”, and to my surprise, I found a documentary called “Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool”. In this film, the life of Miles is recounted in a matter-of-fact way, with comments from himself (voiced by a voice actor who mimics his speaking style), his friends, acquaintances, relatives, critics, etc., and accompanied by a wealth of footage from the time. Of course, I only knew that Miles was a famous American black trumpeter who had a hole in his nasal septum, so almost everything that was said was very interesting to me.

Miles began to make a name for himself in the NYC jazz scene from his late teens. In fact, jazz was popular in Paris even before World War II, and after the war, it was very popular with the Parisians thanks to the popularity of the Americans who liberated the city. In 1949, Miles was invited to Paris as a rising star and successful trumpeter (in his early 20s) in NYC. Although he was only in Paris for two weeks, in that time Miles fell in love with Juliette Greco (who died in September 2020), who was already quite famous at the time as a young singer in the Parisian chanson scene. Miles had never had a real love affair before, as he had been too busy with music. And then, in the foreign city of Paris, he met an intelligent white beauty who was also involved in music. While strolling along the banks of the Seine with Juliet, they exchanged conversations in frustrating English. Juliet was not very good at English at the time, but she had a wide circle of friends in France, and she introduced Miles to the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Of course, Sartre was also fluent in English, and from their conversations Miles learned for the first time in his life that there were many things in the world that were important besides music. However, after returning home from those dream-like two weeks, Miles was unable to forget about Juliette and fell into a depression, seeking help in the form of alcohol and heroin. A few years later, after he had recovered, Juliette announced that she was going to tour the US. Of course, there was also a performance in NYC, so Miles made a reservation at a top-class restaurant in NYC and waited for Juliette. However, she never showed up. It was later discovered that the people involved in the American side had deliberately not passed on Miles' message to Juliette. At the time in America, relationships between black and white people were taboo (well, they still are to a certain extent). Miles learned of this fact and decided that if he continued to pursue Juliette despite this, it would damage her career, so he deliberately acted cold towards her during his subsequent European tour. These cross-cultural issues caused a rift between the two young musicians of the time.

However, that is not the end of the story, and that is the amazing thing about Miles' influence as a musician. In the mid-1950s, the up-and-coming French film director Louis Malle, who was 25 at the time, cast Jeanne Moreau as the lead actress in a film called “Elevator to the Gallows”. This film was a worldwide hit. At this time, he asked Miles to compose the film music. The approach Miles took at that time had such a huge impact that it turned the film music industry on its head. In general, film music is created by using an orchestra to carefully consider each scene in the film and then inserting the music in by the second. However, Miles improvised his trumpet playing while watching the projected images directly, and then recorded it. I actually knew the title of this film, but the first time I saw it was in the spring of 2020, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, I watched it on Amazon Prime's video service. I was aware that Miles was in charge of the trumpet music, but I had no way of knowing that it had been created using such a miraculous method.

Now, this documentary tells us many interesting episodes up until Miles' death in 1991 at the young age of 65, but I think that the two episodes above are the best to introduce on this cross-cultural blog.

In the short time he had left, Miles had many relationships, but all of them ended in disaster due to his own problems (alcohol, drugs, DV). His relationship with Juliette Greco ended in disaster, but it wasn't due to their own problems. As proof of this, both Miles and Juliette said in their later years that they really did love each other, and still do. The tragic ending of this romance seems to be due to more than just simple cross-cultural communication problems, such as differences in language between the US and France, or differences in the extent of racial discrimination. I think that differences in the way the music industries of the two countries think, or more specifically, differences in the methodology of capitalism, are also involved. Although it is a tragic love story, it might be nice to be able to say before you die, “The outcome was painful, but I really loved that person”.

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