Silva was born a British subject to an Azorean/Portuguese mother, Irene da Silva, and a black Bermudian father known only as "Ruby". He emigrated to the United States at the age of five with his mother, eventually acquiring U.S. citizenship by the age of 18 or 19. He adopted the stage name of Alan Silva in his twenties.[2]
Silva was quoted in a Bermudan newspaper in 1988 as saying that although he left the island at a young age, he always considered himself Bermudian. He was raised in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, where he first began studying the trumpet, and moved on to study the upright bass.[2]
Silva performed in 1964's October Revolution in Jazz as a pioneer in the free jazz movement, and for the 1967 live album Albert Ayler in Greenwich Village. Since the early 1970s, Silva has lived mainly in Paris, France, where he formed the Celestrial Communication Orchestra, a group dedicated to the performance of free jazz with various instrumental combinations.[3] In the 1990s he picked up the electronic keyboard, declaring that his bass playing no longer surprised him. He has also used the electric violin and electric sarangi on his recordings.[6]
In the 1980s, Silva opened a music school I.A.C.P. (Institute for Art, Culture and Perception) in Central Paris, together with François Cotinaud and Denis Colin, introducing the concept of a Jazz Conservatory patterned after France's traditional conservatories devoted to European classical music epochs.[7]
Since around 2000, he has performed more frequently as a bassist and bandleader, notably at New York City's annual Vision Festivals.[5]
