"Action is character." - F Scott Fitzgerald

There's this most iconic image of Charles Mingus showing the legendary jazz bassist with the American flag draped over his lap. Mingus the poetic figure of feral courage, paladin of social consciousness. Indeed, it must be acknowledged that in his music and its elated vigour that Mingus manages find his truest and most immediate of expressions. Every note he thumped along, each primal grunt, is tantamount to revolt. Haitian Fight Song, II B.S., Fables Of Faubus: these were the protoplast battle tapes. In the colossal presence and emotions of this music, in the imagery of his heavy frame crouched over his instrument in intense concentration, it would almost seem like Charles Mingus wouldn't have much use for empty rhetoric.

Of course, in our branded culture of corporate space as the new fascist state, it is understandable to take a cautionary stance towards any such inscribed deportment with even the vaguest semblance of tasteless commercial imprint. It is exactly his abhorrence of this vacuous level at which his work is held at that Mingus railed against. The crazed musician who will hound at his audience's inattention with sudden outbursts. The obstinacy of (in his own words) 'a madman in his most incandescent bloom'.

It is this highly unstable temperament and emotionality that leads into the tempestuous side to Charles Mingus, unravelling itself with the tormented nature of an Othello complex: Blood. Death. Damnation. It is the darkest elements that threaten to wreck havoc with his raw sensuality, loaded with torment, carnality and rage. Moody spirituality of the highest order, a gospel swing you could barely decipher until you get hit in your soul. In this respect, it is the 'ethnic folk-dance' suites of Black Saint And A Sinner Lady or raw sexual energy of Blues And Roots that truly made up and captured the full-blooded genius, creativity and sensuousness of Mingus, a most extraordinary piece of musical catharsis. An anguished tide of inquietude haunting us with the most regal violence and blind fury.

In more than thirty years worth of recordings, Charles Mingus poured his heart and passion into his music. Coming alive in colours of the wildest imagination and exclamatory self-revelation, it is a passion that is never weighted down by the music's overwhelming physicality. A passion that echoed the iconography of the times; of artistic liberation as a form of protest. If music is the language of emotions, jazz found its greatest exaltation in Charles Mingus. Fuck. Fight.

back to Archives