Ashley Kahn, acclaimed author of Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece, and A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album, will be coming to the University of Toledo’s CFPA on November 14 at 7pm to lecture on the history and influence of Miles Davis’s seminal Kind of Blue. Mr. Kahn spoke with the Toledo City Paper on his love for jazz, teaching and the values of keeping the open mind of an information sponge.
What would you say to those new students — who might not normally be interested in jazz — to really draw them in?
Well, I’m going to be presenting something that I’m very passionate about. And I think that its less important that anyone absolutely agree with me about what I’m focused on, and much more important that they take away the passion and the focus that I bring to bear on the subject at hand. And that they can figure a way to apply that kind of energy and that kind of passion to whatever it is that they want to focus on. So, I’m hoping to provide, by example, a way of digging deep and penetrating whatever it is that someone is into.
It could be music, something like hip-hop, R&B, rock and roll, or it could be some other form of cultural expression: theatre, dance, visual arts, maybe politics. Whatever it is. I think that in my teaching, which I do at NYU, that’s what I try and share. Whatever it is that they’re kind of generally interested in, don’t just scratch the surface. Really dig deep.
I find it interesting that you actually mention something as relatively recent as hip-hop. Do you think that your background with jazz leaves you more open to something like that?
Part of what comes out of a very serious, intense approach to any kind of cultural or social kind of statements is that time always has that effect of making [things] more legitimate. Whereas if its younger, its always dismissed. Who’s to say that 25 years from now we won’t be talking about Adele’s album as like the representative album of this generation? Or how a song by Rhiana or, some album by Ludacris is that which defines this era in time. We don’t know. But the thing is that you have to be open to it all in order to develop some sort of legitimate mechanism to measure this. There’s no…app that you can download on your iPhone that says, “Oh, this recording is going to be great in twenty-five years. And that? Forget about. That’s going to be looked upon like, you know, fluff.”
It’s refreshing to hear someone so recognized on a topic open to newer things. Now, while we’re on that appreciation of genres I want to ask you: What is it about jazz, specifically, that resonated so strongly with you that you wanted to bring the stories of those artists, and that industry, to the world.
That’s a good question. For me, it gets to the point where you don’t think about music as genres. You think of music as this very wide stream that has different flavors, all flowing inside of it, but it’s always so liquid, that it’s flowing in and out of itself. So there’s hip-hop, but hip-hop doesn’t define just one sound anymore. It’s such a buffet of flavors, and it’s the same with jazz.
So, it’s really more of a love of music itself that gets you into this?
Yeah, well that’s what happens. It’s like a friend of mine once described it: He says “It’s like you jump in the river and then the force of the flow is gonna take you where it wants you to go.”
And it doesn’t matter if you start as a jazz lover, or a hip hop lover or someone who’s only listening to rock, or only listening to music recorded by their peers. Because eventually, you listen to enough music that someone is going to influence you to check out outside of your self-defined category.
But you asked me about jazz, let me answer that.
There’s a certain depth of feeling and emotion that I feel in jazz that comes from the idea of improvisation. I mean if there’s a sort of defining characteristic to jazz that goes back to its roots and is still there, well, one is that sort of blues flavor, and the second is improv.
And improv, after you really listen to it for a while, I mean it’s there when hip-hop guys freestyle. That’s improvisation! It helps to define who they are as musicians. And to me, there’s nothing more powerful than the satisfaction that comes from hearing a musician really defining who they are as an individual through their music. And I think that if I had to decide, ‘why jazz?’ maybe that’s it.
So, are you excited to be able to bring all of this passion to UT’s First Look + Listen program?
Oh, very excited. Listen, there’s nothing like speaking to students who are hungry to get their lives started. This is more than just students, and teachers, and classrooms. These are people getting their lives started for the first time. It should be an exciting time of one’s life. And it doesn’t get repeated. And here, I’m 52, and when I think of where I was when I was 18, 19, 20 years old, what I was trying out, what I was doing, where my mind was going, and where I wanted to be challenged…Hell yeah, I’m excited! That’s the audience that I want!
They are in that position, a very special time, in life. So I’m very excited that Jennifer Rockwood invited me to be a part of this program and that it’s right then when they’re starting their college careers. As a teacher I couldn’t ask for anything more challenging and exciting at the same time.
Sounds exciting.
It is. I just got myself excited. [Laughs]