Love Quote by Branford Marsalis

Miles Davis has become jazz's most convenient myth: the lone genius who coolly "invented" whatever came next. Branford Marsalis is pushing back on that packaging, not by diminishing Miles, but by refusing the tidy narrative that fans, critics, and even jazz education lean on when they need a clean arc. The first clause flatters the tribe ("Jazz fans love Miles") while quietly calling out how fandom can turn into a loyalty test. Then Marsalis pivots: his love is real, "for a myriad of reasons", a phrase that signals lived proximity to the music rather than a Wikipedia relationship with it.

The target is "the overviews" - the canonical summaries: Kind of Blue equals modal purity, Bitches Brew equals fusion rupture, Miles equals perpetual reinvention. Those stories aren't wrong; they're just too smooth. They sand down the frictions that made Davis matter: the collaborative scaffolding (arrangers, sidemen, producers), the failures and dead ends, the business pressures, the messy human contradictions, the way style is shaped by scene, technology, and ego. Marsalis, a musician speaking as a working insider, is also defending craft. Overviews often credit innovation to a single icon, but players know the truth: change happens in rehearsal rooms, on bandstands, inside bands that argue, splinter, and steal ideas lovingly.

Subtext: loving Miles doesn't require worship. It requires attention - the kind that risks complexity, and therefore resists turning jazz into a museum label.