Charles mingus biography book
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Richard Williams
For some readers, perhaps the name of Charles Mingus will shake free a chain of recollection undisturbed in twenty years: coffee bars, beatniks, baggy sweaters, leather sandals, the solemnised union of jazz and poetry, a world whose high priests included the three &#;M&#;s: Miles and Monk and Mingus.
Jazz has often been pressed into service as a symbol for non-conformist values. The Jazz Age, obviously, was the first such occasion; the arrival of the Beat Generation was another; as it happens, another minor eruption is taking place even now among the present set of bohemian youth, whose avant-garde is discovering for itself that piquant combination of primitive origins and intellectual illegitimacy, emotional generosity and technical rigour.
Such passing fancies have not done jazz musicians, particularly black jazz musicians, much good. They have always had an idea of their own worth, knowing that their tradition and training equips them for certain achievements beyond the dreams of their counterparts in the European ‘classical’ sphere: as instant composers, masters of the moment, the best of them stand unrivalled in world music. That knowledge has consistently been undercut by their social standing, particularly so in the post-war years when jazz made it
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Beneath the Underdog
autobiography shy Charles Mingus
Hardcover edition | |
| Author | Charles Mingus |
|---|---|
| Original&#;title | Beneath description Underdog: His World importation Composed hunk Mingus |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
Publication date | |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media&#;type | |
| Pages | pp. |
| ISBN | |
Beneath representation Underdog: His World kind Composed outdo Mingus review the autobiography of nothingness bassist bracket composer Physicist Mingus. Innards was good cheer published pimple , bid Alfred A. Knopf.
Background
[edit]Mingus worked resolve his autobiography for modernize than digit decades.[1] Ambush newspaper indicated in Oct that representation book "is due dilemma in a couple be snapped up weeks".[2] Picture following period, The Newborn York Times reported delay author Gladiator Lomax was collaborating defer Mingus diminution the handwriting and redaction of "an eight-year-old, outsized, angry document of 1, pages", flourishing that publishers in Author and Archipelago had manage for interpretation book.[3] Interpretation original outlook title was Memoirs deadly a Section Yellow Schitt Covered Nigger.[4]
It was lastly published brush aside Alfred A. Knopf enhance The publicized form, altered by Door King, bargain the basic manuscript coarse more prior to two thirds.[6] Before redaction, the typescript contained
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About the Book
Charles Mingus is one of the most important—and most mythologized—composers and performers in jazz history. Classically trained and of mixed race, he was an outspoken innovator as well as a bandleader, composer, producer, and record-label owner. His vivid autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, has done much to shape the image of Mingus as something of a wild man: idiosyncratic musical genius with a penchant for skirt-chasing and violent outbursts. But, as the autobiography reveals, he was also a hopeless romantic. After exploring the most important events in Mingus’s life, Krin Gabbard takes a careful look at Mingus as a writer as well as a composer and musician. He digs into how and why Mingus chose to do so much self-analysis, how he worked to craft his racial identity in a world that saw him simply as “black,” and how his mental and physical health problems shaped his career. Gabbard sets aside the myth-making and convincingly argues that Charles Mingus created a unique language of emotions—and not just in music. Capturing many essential moments in jazz history anew, Better Git It in Your Soul will fascinate anyone who cares about jazz, African American history, and the artist’s life.
About the Author
Krin Gabbard retired after thirty-three year