Charles Mingus had many things to say, and he used his mouth, his pen, his fists, and mostly his music to say them. Of the myriad words that describe Mingus, passionate would trump all others. Mingus cared—deeply.
Charles Mingus did not do small.
He was a big man, with big appetites, big ambitions, big grievances, big passions, big skills, and above all, a big vision.
By any reasonable criteria, he easily ranks as one of the foremost musicians and composers in American history: the scope of his recorded works is vast, varied and awe-inspiring. He can—and should—be included on any list alongside his hero Duke Ellington, and only Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk led as many remarkable bands and produced such a staggering body of work.
(A LOT more on Mingus, HERE.)
Like Ellington, Mingus wrote his autobiography in his music. Unlike Ellington, Mingus was never accorded remotely the same measure of respect, money and corresponding opportunities. As a result he was a constant cauldron of insecurity, anger and, more than occasionally, fear. Certainly not the first or last man in America to see his brilliance misconstrued, undermined or (worst by far) ignored, Mingus, as much as any 20th Century icon, had sufficient cause to feel aggrieved.
That this man with a chip on his shoulder the size of a skyscraper was able to remain as productive and positive as he did is a testament to his will, and a defiant commentary on our not-so-awesome American tradition of failing to appreciate or embrace our geniuses while they share air with us.
It is, therefore, instructive to learn more about the forces that drove Mingus, and the impulses that, at times, derailed him. He could be his own worst enemy, as the burnt bridges, ruined relationships, and botched business deals demonstrate. Still, if he occasionally terrified the musicians in his employ, he frequently drove them to do their best work. The list of artists and industry veterans who stood by him (some of whom, like his widow Sue Mingus, actively promote his legacy to this day) is considerable.
I feel a divine connection with eternal life when I write. I feel like something better than me is coming out of me
–Charles Mingus
I’ve written about Mingus often, and with much considerable love. Here are some longer essays and reviews (including a very long tribute to the 20th Century masterpiece Mingus Ah Um) HERE, HERE, and HERE.
My poetry collection THE BLACKENED BLUES is part of a large and ongoing project that discusses (and celebrates) some of the author’s personal heroes who remain far less celebrated than they deserve to be. As it happens, many of them are musicians, hampered in various ways by discrimination, ranging from old fashioned racism to institutional and cultural indifference. Though there’s an elegiac sadness suffusing these poems, there’s also acknowledgment of defiant genius: they fought their battles bravely, in their art and in their lives. This collection seeks to capture something (or, hopefully, more than a few things) essential about their lives, bearing witness while also paying homage.
I’d like to introduce the collection, one poem at a time (in the order they appear in the book), and tell a little bit about the inspiration for each, by way of explanation and in tribute.
Next up is “Charles Mingus’s Miracle” (thanks to Burningword Literary Journal for publishing this, and nominating it for the Pushcart Prize).
Charles Mingus’s Miracle
The thing about Charlie Mingus Jr.—who clattered
onto the scene like a grand piano in a punch bowl—
is that he also was young once. More than that, fate
made him endure indignities that make a street bum
look like Reagan’s strapping young buck on food stamps,
savoring a T-bone. System so sullied even mobsters did
more than music critics, but you know, that’s entertainment.
I’m black, therefore I’m not: this is what four hundred years
of errors and trials—faith wrung out from unripened rinds—
forced folks with the nerve to be born neither wealthy nor white
to know from the get-go. And for the love of a stained-glass God,
don’t speak off-script or they’ll wash the mutiny from your mouth
with a firehose; that’s why most men lie down mutely in darkness,
safe or at least sheltered, beneath the underdog of hatred & history.
Get them to kill each other, or even better, hoodwink them
into hating themselves: that’s the anti-American Dream too
many citizens sleep through, fed a fixed diet of indifference,
intolerance, and interference. So what can you do if you know
you’re a genius, and all the klan’s men can never convince you
water isn’t wet? Keep rolling that rock up the hill until it grinds
a fresh groove into the earth: improvise your own force majeure.
This is almost my time, he said, and good God wasn’t he
more than half-right. I know one thing, (you can quote him)
I’m not going to let anyone change me. Overflowing with
awareness of himself, fresh out of the furnace, molded in
the image of a bird that flew first and further—mapping out
the contours of this new language: dialogic, indomitable—
his work exploded, a defiant weed cutting through concrete.
1957: five albums in twelve months—righteous waves
quenching a coastline, reconfiguring the world the way
Nature does. And his reward—a brief stretch in Bellevue,
ain’t that a bitch? Listen: when The Duke declared music
his mistress, he was lucky enough to need nobody, aware
that the genetic razor cleaving obsession and insanity is
capricious, like all those calamities Poseidon orchestrated.
Mingus was never not human, the impossible endowment
that drove him, destroyed him and, in death, restored him.
His tenacity was the heat that both healed and hurt, a comet
cursed with consciousness—he went harder, dug deeper,
even as his best work impended, yet-unrealized revelations:
Blues and Roots the brown man’s burden, a thorny crown
worn only by dispossessed prophets willing or able to testify.
His recalcitrant wisdom: earned the way trees acquire
rings: the reality of who he was, even if he too changed
at times, like the country that claimed him, mostly after
the fact. And whether you’re committed, an exiled crusader,
or a respectable suit working to death in squared circles,
the message from that rare bird’s song still resounds today,
an epiphany blown through the slipstream: Now’s the Time.
Another poem in the collection is entitled “Shafi Hadi’s Silence” (originally published by Empty Mirror as “Where the Hell is Shafi Hadi?”).
(*Saxophone player Shafi Hadi, born Curtis Porter, is best-known for his association with jazz legend Charles Mingus, and played on the seminal recording Mingus Ah Um, from 1959. He dropped out of the scene in the early ‘60s and the reasons why, and his current whereabouts, are unknown.)
Shafi Hadi’s Silence
i.
Those sounds, not falling on enough ears
then. Inaccessible, unknown, unwanted—now.
Today, where audiences vote for winners
hand-picked by specialists called consultants and
marketing departments with both barrels aimed
beneath the bottom line, a nothing-in-common
Denominator for something once considered sacred,
Art—or was it something else altogether, something
Important? Jazz was actually a matter of life and death:
Beautiful but always too short: the note, the feeling,
the connection, the song, the show, this life.
Made in America: a way to relate invented
by the people, for the people, for sale, forever.
Because it was meant to last it could never last,
at least long enough to survive our obsession for
new things, and the old-fashioned notion of
interests and attention spans longer than shadows,
cast quietly in a smoke-soaked nightclub.
ii.
Who did we become? Over-rehearsed and under-employed,
outcast or worse, obscure enough to not warrant a second
look: unrecognized in familiar places no one knows about
Or bothers to go because nothing happens there anymore.
Where did we go? Into used record bins and basements,
burn-outs or bums, teachers or else repurposed as working
stiffs, at offices or in asylums or out on the streets, the ones
who knew they were never going nowhere:
Tripping always over those sticks and stones that
kept us high and put us under the earth,
slings & arrows of outrageous misfortune: all
the effort, all the energy, all the discipline, all for nothing.
What did you think? We could eat the air and drink up
the Nothing like nourishment? No, it was sketchy enough
when we looked into the dark and eyes looked back at us:
Two-drink minimums and overpriced appetizers keeping
the front of the house solvent for a few more evenings.
Even then we shuffled & scrapped and kept hoping that
these works-in-progress—also called our lives—would
mean enough to enough of you that we could keep
the act intact, long enough to do something more than survive.
Or else avoid seeing the light that meant everything was
over: the gig up, the profits gone, the sounds expired.
iii.
What the hell, I say, the world never owed none of us
a living, and who said anyone should feel sympathy
for men making sounds no one asked to hear?
For solidarity with a handful of humans exploring
the spaces in between us and what we used to call
the underground: that backstage some are born into,
asking, Are great artists born or made? Or else:
Who cares, the best ones find their way, always, or
get found, discovered, rescued, rehabilitated even
after they die. But what about the ones left behind
The seen? The ones keeping the beat or blasting
their melody, the ones on the front lines behind
the man, side-men no one would know, in the grooves or
on the bus. How could you say you know me when
I don’t even know myself (no more)? No more time,
no more chances, no more luck, no more life.
So when do we go? Is it that same old song
and dance with Death? The unhappy ending all of us
nod off to, humming some tired tune when time’s up and
the band plays on—around us while we stumble or stretch,
happy, blind, scared or sensing something sort of like bliss,
Into the dark? Is it, in the end, the opposite of that sound we spent
a lifetime learning and playing and loving and lamenting?
The one sound we all reckoned would still linger
after the last encore of the greatest show on earth:
Silence.
