MUSICAL MONDAY ~ Miles Davis

On this day, 28 September, in 1991 Miles Davis died. Davis's musicianship, trumpet playing and composing is part of jazz history - he is almost universally revered, yet is said to have had a difficult and strange personality. His music, then, must have been exceptionally brilliant to overcome that drawback.

I first became aware of Miles Davis through my husband, the jazz fan. Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, featured on the Davis album "Sketches of Spain" has entranced me from the first time I heard it. I can hardly call myself a jazz fan, yet I can appreciate some pieces, especially those with a semi-classical base.

Miles Davis was born on 26 May 1926 in Alton, Illinois, at 5 am according to Astrodatabank. Some sources have his birthday as 25 May, but Astrodatabank gives 26th and 5am an AA rating - I'm going with that.

Here's an excerpt from an on-line biography. My comments on related astrology follow.

For the last two decades of Davis's career he became more of a jazz curiosity than a musician to be taken seriously. A good part of his fame owed less to his considerable musicianship than to his strange personality. Davis gained a poor reputation in performance for turning his back on audiences, for expressing racial hostility toward whites, for dressing poorly early in his career and wildly later—all of which contributed to his mysterious image.

Davis was a complex man with strengths and weaknesses that would ultimately destroy him. Himself the victim of a policeman's clubbing (reportedly, racially inspired), he had the fairness and courage in the late 1950s to challenge black jazzmen's expectations by filling a piano vacancy with a white player, Bill Evans (1929–1980); but then, by all accounts, Davis often racially taunted him. A physical fitness enthusiast (with his own private gym), he nevertheless took vast amounts of drugs (sometimes, but not always, for pain). Oftentimes unfriendly, he was also capable of acts of generosity toward struggling musicians, both black and white.

Davis was married three times—to dancer Frances Taylor, singer Betty Mabry, and actress Cicely Tyson. All three marriages ended in divorce. He had, in all, three sons, a daughter, and seven grandchildren. He died on September 28, 1991, in Santa Monica, California, of pneumonia, respiratory failure, and a stroke.

The Gemini Sun in Davis's natal chart links closely to very little - it lay within a few degrees of the ascendant, but in 12th house, which astrologers consider to be an area of withdrawal. I think this might account in part for his strange personality - turning his back on the audience, for instance, might be a reflection of this.

There's a Grand Trine in emotional, creative and sensitive Water signs in his chart. It links Moon/Saturn in Scorpio to Uranus in Pisces and Pluto in Cancer. While Water signs are generally emotionally driven, and a Grand Trine is a helpful circuit between signs of the same element, the inclusion of Saturn, Uranus and Pluto in this particular Watery circuit bring in a touch of negativity and some bloody-mindedness.

The other main configuration in this chart is a Grand Cross (shown right), involving Moon/Saturn, Mercury, Jupiter and Neptune - made up of square aspects and oppositions - all challenging in different ways, often resulting in a few difficult personality traits. Davis had many challenges to overcome in his life - racial prejudice, addiction and ill health being high on the list. The planets involved in this Grand Cross relate to communication (Mercury) publication and expansion (Jupiter), creativity and addiction (Neptune) and Inner self (Moon)/rigidity and discipline (Saturn). One integrated opposition: Mercury and Moon/Saturn is especially notable here, involving, as it does, Mercury the communications planet opposed by Moon/Saturn a kind of inner self policed by Saturn push-pulling with a need to communicate.


On the positive side, his art - his musicianship - is underlined by Venus, planet of the arts, in go-getting Aries forming a helpful trine to Neptune, planet of creativity in Leo. In addition to his talent in music, I ought to mention that Miles Davis was quite an accomplished painter, it was something he enjoyed in his later years.








More about Miles and his music at "Miles Styles" by Michael S Smith.