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You will be asked to answer one of two essay questions using approximately 750 plus words (3-4 paragraphs). Use detailed and factual information. This essay is worth 12 points. Your question is chosen randomly. 1. Please discuss the Avant-Garde, Black Activism, and the 1960s'. or 2. Please discuss Miles Davis's life and music. Don't forget his musical innovations, bands, or personal life stories.

User Lam Vinh
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ESSAY ON THE LIFE OF MILES DAVIS

Miles Davis, undoubtedly was born in a time marked by racism, although he was characterized by being a genius with the trumpet, he was a victim of racism, yet Miles with that daring personality and with that spirit of leadership that characterized him, He did not prevent those events from discouraging him from continuing to play, from continuing to create melodies with his trumpet that reached the hearts of all kinds of people regardless of their race, color, or religion, Miles through his music reflected that desire for equality for all within a nation that resisted to tolerate and give freedom of expression. That is why Miles today is remembered not only as a great ingenuity that opened the way for other people to also enter music. Miles Davis was the dominant force in jazz for at least thirty-five years. He listened, touched, and sought his own perspective; his gaze was always focused on the present and the future, never on the past. He argued that music must change (like the world) to maintain its significance. He never stood still, he never tamed, he never sought his comfort space; was constantly being reborn. Like every superior artist, with each change he left behind one style or way of working to face another; In this way he gained new followers and lost others, gained new accolades and new detractors. And none of it mattered to him.

Between 1975 and 1980, Miles stopped playing to deepen and ultimately abandon his brutal cocaine addiction. At the end of that period, in a self-taught and almost therapeutic way, to finish cleaning his body and mind of the drug intake that he maintained for almost four decades, he took up the brush and devoted himself to reflecting his thoughts on the canvas. What started as a hobby became a true passion for the musician. He took classes in New York with Jo Gelbard, with whom he developed a very good and sincere relationship; in fact, she accompanied him in his last days.

Miles's routine included painting in the morning for about five hours, then practicing with his instrument for a couple of hours, boxing, and finally composing and recording. “Painting for me is therapeutic. It keeps my mind busy with something while I'm not playing. " Very few of his paintings were exhibited during his lifetime, and it was only after his death that the more than one hundred works by Miles began touring galleries and museums around the world in their own right. At his last European concert in Paris in 1991, he played against the background of one of his large paintings.

User Steve Gilham
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