"Coltrane was moving out of jazz into something else. And certainly Miles Davis was doing the same thing"
About this Quote
Garbarek’s line lands like a quiet provocation: calling Coltrane and Miles “jazz” starts to feel too small, almost polite. The word “moving” matters here. It suggests not a break or a betrayal, but a migration - artists following sound where it leads, even if the map (genre) can’t keep up. Coming from Garbarek, a musician often filed under “ECM jazz” but shaped by Nordic folk, classical spacing, and ambient hush, it’s also a self-portrait in disguise: a defense of permeability.
The subtext is a debate about ownership. Jazz, especially in the postwar canon, can harden into a museum category: standards, swing feel, sanctioned heroes. Garbarek points to Coltrane’s late spiritual explosions and Miles’s electric reinvention as evidence that the greats didn’t merely “innovate within” jazz; they treated it as a launchpad. That framing resists purism. It also gently reframes listeners who police the borders as people clinging to a label, not the impulse that made the label matter.
Context helps: Garbarek came up after the 1960s rupture, when “jazz” splintered into free, fusion, spiritual, and studio experiment. In that aftermath, invoking Coltrane and Miles isn’t trivia; it’s cover. If the two most canonized figures were already escaping the category, then anyone accused of drifting - Europeans, genre-blenders, sound-sculptors - can claim lineage. The line doesn’t just describe history; it argues for artistic freedom as the tradition’s true core.
The subtext is a debate about ownership. Jazz, especially in the postwar canon, can harden into a museum category: standards, swing feel, sanctioned heroes. Garbarek points to Coltrane’s late spiritual explosions and Miles’s electric reinvention as evidence that the greats didn’t merely “innovate within” jazz; they treated it as a launchpad. That framing resists purism. It also gently reframes listeners who police the borders as people clinging to a label, not the impulse that made the label matter.
Context helps: Garbarek came up after the 1960s rupture, when “jazz” splintered into free, fusion, spiritual, and studio experiment. In that aftermath, invoking Coltrane and Miles isn’t trivia; it’s cover. If the two most canonized figures were already escaping the category, then anyone accused of drifting - Europeans, genre-blenders, sound-sculptors - can claim lineage. The line doesn’t just describe history; it argues for artistic freedom as the tradition’s true core.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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