Mingus Dynasty Septet at Slee Hall

Mingus Dynasty Septet
Slee Hall at University of Buffalo
Buffalo, NY
November 1, 2024

The Mingus Dynasty Septet performed on Friday, November 1, 2024, at UB's Slee Hall (SUNY Buffalo) as part of its Visiting Artist Series. The Septet's personnel and the concert's set list are at the bottom of this review.

Charles Mingus is one of America's greatest composers. He was of mixed race and his mother died when he was an infant. He grew up in Watts in the 1920s and 1930s and demonstrated virtuosity on the cello, but changed to the jazz bass as it was clear black musicians could not make a career in the racist world of classical music.

Frustration with Jim Crow America's racism was a constant theme in Mingus' body of work, as in "Fables of Faubus," a protest song targeted at Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus.

In 1957 Faubus fanned the flames of hate when he created the "Little Rock Crisis" employing the National Guard to prevent nine African American teenagers from attending all-white Little Rock Central High School.

The Mingus Dynasty Septet performed the song with some of the call-and-response lyrics originally omitted by Columbia Records before making it onto an independent 1960 recording, Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus.

Oh, Lord, don't let 'em shoot us! Oh, Lord, don't let 'em stab us! Oh, Lord, no more swastikas! Oh, Lord, no more Ku Klux Klan!

Name me someone who's ridiculous, Dannie. Governor Faubus! Why is he so sick and ridiculous? He won't permit integrated schools.

Then he's a fool! Boo! Nazi fascist supremacists! Boo! Ku Klux Klan (with your Jim Crow plan).

Name me a handful that's ridiculous, Dannie Richmond. Faubus, Rockefeller, Eisenhower. Why are they so sick and ridiculous?

Two, four, six, eight: They brainwash and teach you hate. H-E-L-L-O, Hello

The November 5, 2024 presidential election was not far from anyone's minds; trombonist Conrad Herwig made clear there was no distance between Mingus the "freedom fighter" and the musicians onstage saying, "you can put us down for Kamala Harris."

There were no red hats in a well-attended Slee Hall, and my sense of the room was that all shared Mingus' egalitarian vision rather than the retrograde white supremacy of Orval Faubus or any similar, more contemporary fool who may be on the ballot.

Although Mingus was an important part of midcentury bebop he is best understood as a champion of free jazz, collective improvisation, and the avant-garde. Just as Gershwin sought to fuse early jazz with classical music, Mingus echoed Stravinsky's modernism with its irregular rhythms and angular harmonies.

Mingus' famous tribute to Lester Young, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is a good example of his compositional style which, like Stravinsky, uses traditional musical forms yet refuses to follow established compositional rules.

"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" is a traditional blues song, but Mingus's harmonic progression fails to adhere to traditional patterns just as Stravinsky's "waltz" is filled with dissonances and sudden stops.

You can hear the blues and feel the waltz, but both compositions absorb so much unresolved tension and dynamic rhythm that they burst from their boundaries and demand to be called something new.

The Mingus Dynasty Septet was the first band Mingus' widow Sue Mingus organized after Charles Mingus' death in 1979, collaborating with his sidemen to honor his life and work. The Septet's current iteration is composed of high-level professionals skilled in the complex art of conversational, collective improvisation.

Bassist Boris Kozlov's sophisticated of arrangements of Mingus' work have preserved his body of work for generations; Friday's concert was an electrifying realization of his compositional genius.

Highlights included an extended, improvised tenor sax introduction to "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," piano and alto sax solos on "Sue's Changes," and a trombone solo on "Peggy's Blue Skylight."

Philip Harper put aside his trumpet to sing "Baby Take a Chance With Me," a charming swing tune written by a 17-year-old Mingus, and an extended drum solo took the band into its rousing finale, "Better Git It In Your Soul."

There is no way to know, but I think Mingus would have liked what he heard Friday night. And then he would have told all of us to get out there Tuesday and stop that damn racist fool.

Personnel

Boris Kozlov, Wayne Escoffery, Brandon Wright, Philip Harper, Conrad Herwig, David Kikoski and Donald Edwards.

Set List

So Long Eric; Fables of Faubus; Peggy's Blue Skylight; Baby Take a Chance With Me; Sue's Changes; Goodbye Pork Pie Hat; Three of Four Shades of Blue; Better Git It In Your Soul.

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