“Don’t play what’s there. Play what’s not there.” The contemplative spirituality of Jazz improvisation, musical creativity, and transformational research methods

Miles Davis advised his musicians, “don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.” Herbie Hancock said, “Jazz is about being in the moment.” Sonny Rollins said, “you can’t think and play at the same time.” That they sound like musicians and meditation teachers is typical. Jazz musicians frequently embrace the transformational capacity of music within a markedly contemplative approach to creativity. Engaging this in a scholarly capacity points toward research methods supportive of the academic impulse to understand and put into words these depths of experience. This paper explores how the intentional, inspired musical creativity of Jazz musicians also describes the transformational processes of contemplative scholarship, suggesting that understanding music as a contemplative practice deepens the processes by which we understand both while expanding our capacity to think critically about expressive culture and contemplative spirituality as points of personal and collective transformation, for musicians and scholars alike.