In Memoriam: Genre-Shattering Bassist Richard Davis

One pearl of wisdom that I heard dropped over and over was, “Genre does not exist. It’s an illusion.” This flies in the face of what most of us have been taught. How can genre, part of the bedrock of music anthology, be an illusion? Years later, I understood precisely what this meant, and why they had to say it. For Black so-called “jazz” musicians, the word jazz had often been used for decades to belittle and undermine generations of significant musical achievements. It certainly did not carry the gravitas or respect that “classical music” commanded. To the powers that be, jazz, as a Black music, was seen as a wholly lower art form.

Jazz has always included drawing from and embracing many musics and influences. Each encounter with something new expanded its boundaries further, as its innovators found ways to incorporate more and more sounds. The forces that attempted to shackle jazz to one lane had less to do with genre and more to do with race.

We should all know the name Miles Davis, but there was another lesser known Davis who also serves as a great example of an artist who shattered genre. I’m speaking of the virtuoso bassist, Richard Davis, who passed away this September at the age of 93.