Creativity Quote by Bill Laswell

Laswell frames Miles Davis less as a stylistic innovator than as a defector from the entire idea of stylistic citizenship. The bite in “supposed to be part of a tradition” is that it exposes tradition not as reverence but as a job description: a set of obligations policed by critics, institutions, and scene elders who treat jazz like a lineage you’re required to safeguard. Davis becomes the problem child precisely because he refuses the role.

“Fully embraced possibilities” is Laswell’s way of describing a creative ethic that’s closer to engineering than nostalgia: follow the sound where it leads, even if it drags the brand with it. The subtext is about permission. Jazz, especially in its canon-building phases, often rewards mastery that looks like continuity; Miles kept choosing rupture. When Laswell notes the “heavy” criticism “from the jazz side,” he’s hinting at how genre communities can turn into border patrols, defending purity against contamination (rock, funk, electronics, studio manipulation) as if these were moral failures rather than tools.

The last clause lands the real provocation: “he didn’t consider himself part of a tradition.” That’s not ignorance of history; it’s a refusal to be governed by it. Laswell, a producer and sonic collagist, is also defending his own worldview here: the artist’s primary loyalty is to the next record, not the previous chapter. In Davis’s case, the cultural context is the late-career pivot to electric, groove-driven, studio-shaped music that made him both a commercial magnet and a critical lightning rod. Laswell’s point is that the scandal wasn’t the sound; it was the autonomy.