Jazz Profile - Charles Mingus

As a child, he heard only church music, but the sounds of Duke Ellington turned him to jazz. He toured with Louis Armstrong played with Lionel Hampton and was briefly a member of Ellington's band, but his explosive temper got him personally fired by Ellington.


In the early 1950s, Mingus played with Charlie Parker, who inspired and influenced him. Mingus considered Parker the greatest genius and innovator in jazz history, but hated his drug use and behavior.

In 1952 Mingus co-founded Debut Records to record young musicians. The most famous recording of his label, though, is the Massey Hall concert with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Max Roach on May 15, 1953,

1956 was a breakthrough year for him, with the release of Pithecanthropus Erectus, a ten minute jazz poem about the rise and fall of man. Mingus then went on to record an amazing thirty albums in ten years.

Mingus couldn’t be labeled, as a person or as a composer. His music contained influences of classical music as well as gospel music. His pieces contained long solos of improvisation and were played differently each night. He was always exploring new areas of jazz. taking cures from bebop and building from there.

One of Mingus’ greatest contributions to jazz is his organizational genius. Mingus carefully cultivated his ensembles, usually 8-10 people. Mingus pushed his ever-rotating groups hard, insisting on dynamic interaction and on-the-spot creations. These groups became known as “University for Jazz”. Like Duke Ellington, Mingus would write pieces for specific members of his group. But, also, he could swiftly fire members, sometimes on stage in the middle of a performance.

As respected as Mingus was for his musical talents, he was sometimes feared for his occasional violent onstage temper, which was at times directed at members of his band, and other times aimed at the audience. He was physically large, prone to obesity (especially in his later years), and was by all accounts often intimidating and frightening when expressing anger or displeasure. Mingus was prone to clinical depression. He tended to have brief periods of extreme creative activity, intermixed with fairly long periods of greatly decreased output.

Mingus’ personality was as feared as his music was respected. Frantic periods of cerativity could eb followed by dark depressions. His anger could be directed at fellow musicians or even at the audience. Mingus would often tell listeners to stop eating and drinking or call for no cash register work during the performance. Mingus felt strongly about civil rights and spoke fearlessly from stage, channeling his anger into politics.

But he also had an ironic sense of humour which can be seen in such song titles as All Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother. Or The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jive Ass slippers.

Epitaph is one of Charles Mingus' masterpieces. It’s 4,235 measures long, requiring two hours to perform, almost like a jazz opera and one of the longest jazz pieces ever written.

Mingus’ music is difficult to describe. Jazz is music to be lived and listened to and performed. So we suggest you listen to II B.S.  (one of my all-time favorites).

A jazz view of Eurovision

Every year European nations send representatives to sing blasting pop songs with elaborate shows in competition with each other. Residents of Europe vote with their mobile phones and in tandem with a panel of judges, a reigning pop monarch is selected.

Ulviyya was in Oslo with the Azerbaijan delegation for Eurovision 2010. She live-tweeted her impressions while there.

While Ulviyya is not pop, she was helping represent her country in an international arena. over the last three years, Eurovision has turned into an event to gain much media attention for Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan's entry, Safura, came in fifth after millions of votes throughgout Europe.

But what is the difference between pop and jazz at these types of events?
So, we can all describe pop and Eurovision certainly has its fans and critics. But what if it was a jazz competition? What would the differences be?

Pop is about competition. If it were a jazz 'competition', there would be jam sessions, and collaboration. While the pop camps send insulting tweets about each other, jazz musicians would express their competition through music. The musicians staying in the hotel together would be playing together, not worried about destroying the other participants.

Pop has rules. Jazz doesn’t. A pop song is around 3 minutes. Otherwise you don’t get radio and video play. Verse, chorus, maybe a bridge. Certain chords go together, certain beats can’t be used. Jazz is about freedom, so – no rules! 12 minute songs, improvisation, solos, performing the song differently each way, experimenting with chords and harmonies and rhythms - everything is allowed. It's the expression of the performer.

Pop is about the masses, not the individual. Pop is short for popular, after all. It’s about cutting down the music to be as comfortable as possible for as many people as possible. Often pop is a production goal, not an artist achievement. Jazz is all about the individual. Even if the artists didn’t write the piece, how it is performed is an individual expression of feeling at that time. Melodies are stretched and molded to mean what the artist wants.

Jazz is about music. And jazz holds festivals, not competitions