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Filles de Kilimanjaro

Filles de Kilimanjaro
Miles Davis-Filles de Kilimanjaro (album cover).jpg
Studio album by Miles Davis
Released February 5, 1969 (1969-02-05)
1968 (UK)
Recorded June 19–21 and September 24, 1968
Studio Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York City
Genre Jazz, post-bop,jazz fusion
Length 56:30
Label Columbia
Producer Teo Macero
Miles Davis chronology
Miles in the Sky
(1968)
Filles de Kilimanjaro
(1968)
In a Silent Way
(1969)
Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
AllMusic 4.5/5 stars
Down Beat 5/5 stars
Encyclopedia of Popular Music 4/5 stars
Penguin Guide to Jazz 3/4 stars
The Rolling Stone Album Guide 4.5/5 stars
Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide 5/5 stars
Sputnikmusic 4.5/5
Uncut 5/5 stars

Filles de Kilimanjaro (French for "Girls of Kilimanjaro") is a studio album by American jazz trumpeter Miles Davis. It was recorded in June and September 1968. The album was released in the United Kingdom by Columbia (CBS) in 1968, and in the United States in February 1969.

The album is a transitional work for Davis, who was shifting stylistically from acoustic recordings with his second "great" quintet to his "electric" period. Filles de Kilimanjaro was well received by contemporary music critics, who viewed it as a significant release in modern jazz.

The June sessions featured Wayne Shorter on saxophone, Herbie Hancock on the electric Rhodes piano, Ron Carter on electric bass, and Tony Williams on drums. The September sessions replaced Hancock with Chick Corea, and Carter with Dave Holland, making Filles de Kilimanjaro the last Miles album to feature his Second Great Quintet, although all except Carter would play on his next album, In A Silent Way. During the September sessions, Holland played acoustic bass and Corea played an RMI Electra-piano in addition to acoustic piano. These are Holland and Corea's first known recordings with Davis. The album was produced by Teo Macero and engineered by Frank Laico and Arthur Kendy.

The album title refers, in part, to Kilimanjaro African Coffee, a company in which Davis had made a financial investment. Davis decided to list all the song titles in French to give the album an exotic touch. Davis married Betty O. Mabry Davis in September 1968, and named "Mademoiselle Mabry (Miss Mabry)" for her. The song itself was recorded during the same month as Davis's wedding and Betty appears on the album cover.

The album can be seen as a transitional work between Davis's mainly acoustic recordings with the Second Quintet and his later electric period (for example, Bitches Brew). It is suffused in the heady abstraction of the 1960s, but attentive to blues tonalities, electronic textures, and dancing rhythms of later jazz fusion. Davis apparently saw it as a transitional work for him, as the album was the first in what would become a series of his releases to bear the subtitle "Directions in music by Miles Davis". However, author Paul Tingen points out that while Carter and Hancock played electric instruments at the first recording session, the later session was a bit of a throwback, in which Holland played only acoustic bass and Corea played both acoustic and electric piano.Stanley Crouch, a staunch critic of Davis's use of electric instruments, has described the album as "the trumpeter's last important jazz record". Noted linguist and Miles Davis-biographer Jack Chambers later wrote that the band sought to expand beyond their usual minimal structure and find a common mood, wanting listeners to "discover the unity of the pieces instead of just locating it, as viewers must discover the unity in a painting with several simultaneous perspectives".


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