40 years ago today, Miles Davis released Tutu - a radical departure even from his own controversial fusion albums of the 1970s and early 80s, making extensive use of drum machines and synthesizers on compositions mostly by Marcus Miller.
I was a freshman in High School, and this album had a lasting effect on me. You could call it part of the soundtrack to my formative years, but also well beyond that: It's been a constant companion.
A year and a half after its release, I met the namesake of the album, Archbishop Desmond Tutu himself, at Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, New York. A greater contrast between the man and the music he inspired would be hard to imagine, at least superficially. The music is dark, foreboding, stark, strong. Tutu himself was something more of an effervescent personality filled with the most natural sunlight and a constant unforced smile, humor, and wit. I've often pondered that contrast, admiring both the man as he seemed when I met him, and the music he inspired from Miller and Davis. What I find in both was strength and resiliency. And what I think Miller gets to in his musical portrait is also what the man meant to so many people in that time and place. Tutu was, in a sense, a man who was undeniable - and he was willing to play his part at a juncture in history that demanded strength and faith even through trying darkness.
Musically speaking I've long admired and sought after the starkly elemental style of Marcus Miller's compositions. His music has a clarity and simplicity of utterance that is immediately arresting and demands your attention. Miles's soloing is likewise elemental, and he hits his spots with such deliberation that it always opens up the musical ideas around him. I'm happy to say I'm as intrigued by this at age 54 as I was at age 14.
