In one of the typical ironies of his life, the only time composer Charles Mingus was nominated fora Grammy award was for his liner notes, not for the music they accompanied, for the Columbia album “Let My Children Hear Music,” released in 1971. Liner notes by Charles Mingus for the album “Let My Children Hear Music” on Columbia Records, 1971. WHAT IS A JAZZ COMPOSER? By Charles Mingus Each jazz musician when he takes a horn in his hand—trumpet, bass, saxophone, drums—whatever instrument he plays—each soloist, that is, when he begins to ad lib on a given composition with a title and improvise a new creative melody, this man is taking the place of a composer. He is saying, “listen, I am going to give you a new complete idea with a new set of chord changes. I am going to give you a new melodic conception on a tune you are familiar with. I am a composer.” That’s what he is saying. I have noticed that there are many kinds of composers in this so-called jazz. For instance, there are musicians who simply take rhythmic patterns and very spare notes-very limited invention melodically— and play in a soulful swinging way. Some people in the audience, when asked what they think about jazz, say, “I just go by the feeling, I go by the feeling the guy gives me.” Now, whether there is feeling or not depends upon what your environment or your association is or whatever you may have in common 1 I marvel at composition. But there is no need to compare composers. although no one’s mentioned that. chromatics. along with new melodic concepts. Lester Young. at people who are able to take diatonic scales. Sonny Rollins. Max Roach. instead of spontaneous creativity. or even quarter-tone scales. that’s okay. because there can be originality in stupidity. Now. I admire anyone who can come up with something original. in a way beyond you. came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns. who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around. Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker. They were all pencil composers.with the player. what I’m getting at is that I know I’m a composer. riffs and patterns. 2 . 12-tone scales. Now he can play with feeling and have no melodic concept at all. If you feel empathy for his personal outlook. I could never get Bird to play over two choruses. myself. I. or any kind of life he has lived. with no musical description of any emotion or any beauty the man has seen. And those people are: Art Tatum. because then it just becomes repetition. I mean critics or musicians. For instance. But not originality alone. That’s often what happens in jazz: I have found very little value left after the average guy takes his first eight bars-not to mention two or three choruses. Bach or Brahms. If you like Beethoven. you naturally feel him musically more than some other environ-mental and musical opposite who is. Bud Powell. I thought I was. I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer. Now. a man says he played with feeling. after you hear the melody and after you hear the solo. Now. what is left. and it shows changes in tempo and changes in mode. They don’t go to hear him improvise a Kodaly. But the validity remains to be seen what comes. yet the variations on the theme still fit into one composition. Who is that good? Today. on this record there is a tune which is an improvised solo and which I am very proud of. you created it. I know and hear what they are doing. Everything is supposed to be invented. In classical music. then you played it in front of the public again.kids play fifty thousand if you let them. They don’t even write down their own tunes. It’s all right. I don’t question it. as they say. You played your ad lib solo. they just make them up as they sit on the bandstand.” they (and all the musicians) memorized their solos and played them back for the audience. for example people go to hear Janos Starker play Kodaly. and if it was worthwhile. When I was a kid and Coleman Hawkins played a solo or Illinois Jacquet created “Flyin’ Home. Today I question whether most musicians can even repeat their solos alter they’ve played them once on record. because the audience had heard them on records. things are at the other extreme. the guys never repeat anything at all and probably couldn’t. Unless you just want to hear the feeling. they go to hear how he played it on record and how it was written. (It is not like some music I hear where the musician plays eight bars and then the next eight 3 . Jazz was at one time the same way. I am proud because to me it has the expression of what I feel. rather than realizing that my composition began some place and developed to another. Isaac Stern. For the six or seven minutes it was played (originally on piano).bars sound like he is playing another tune). I would say the composition is on the whole as structured as a written piece of music. several feelings expressed as one. it calls for a technique that jazz has not even begun to express yet. although most people in the past did not understand the range I used to play (nowadays most all bass players use this range when they solothe full scope of the bass). I have never struggled to be accepted as a great bassist-I imagine I could have been if I had seen my available musical goal there. the solo was within the category of one feeling. with the bow or with pizzicato. If people really knew the qualification of a good bass player. The full-developed bass player masters harmonics with a sense-I don’t mean just scraping the 1 Which. Salvatore Accardo? Or which is the Best String Quartet of the Year-Budapest or Juilliard? 4 . they would flip-because I know thirty or forty bass players who have the technique that I have. I’m not sure whether every musician who improvises can do this. or rather. I think I do it better on bass.1 Whether or not they are as inventive is something else because when you study the instrument. there has never been a contest to decide who is the King of the Trumpet in the Symphony. Yehudi Menuhin. because they didn’t really listen. along with the jazz hump music and nigger contests. Or who is the Best Violin Soloist-Jascha Heifetz. incidentally. they thought I was just playing high to play high. brings to mind another thought. or maybe two basses in a reed section. He used to study through the mail and. I never had the chance so I could never say how it really sounds. for his lessons.bow across and making squeak sounds. my dream has been to put basses. Had I been born in a different country or had I been born white. it is only in my mind that I can say I hear it and it would work better than most baritone saxes. I mean he can play compositions in harmonics. in place of the baritone saxophone. But when you have to wait thirty years to get one piece played—what do you think happens to a composer who is sincere and loves to write and has to wait thirty years to have someone play a piece of his music? That was when I was energetic and wrote all the time. I would write things for him and he would re-tape them and send them back. you critics? Here is a piece I wrote in 1939 and I wrote it like this because thought in 1939 I would probably get it recorded some day. That was when I realized how much more could done. musically. Back to the record: the music on this record is involved with my trying to say what the hell I am here for. by utilizing all the possibilities of this instrument. Music was my life. but I’ve got a feeling 5 . Maybe they wouldn’t have been as good because when people are born free—I can’t imagine it. For instance. But mainly I am saying: Do you really know Mingus. Another one is: let my children hear music -for God’s sake-they have had enough noise. And similar ideas. I had a classical student who was in the symphony in Minneapolis. by using the boss with the bow. There are a million bowings that could and probably do duplicate a horn better. I am sure I would have expressed my ideas long ago. Beethoven. (He used to be the first alto player in Les Height’s band. he said: “What is this?” and he played a record.that if it’s so easy for you. Debussy. but he said: “What do you think is going on in this particular movement right there?” And I said: “I don’t know. They had a few hillbilly and a few records they called rhythm & blues. but there’s a whole lotta shit going on. I remember Richard Strauss. There’s too much to figure out. Bach. Lloyd Reese was a master musician. Part of the reason I am a composer is that I studied composition with Lloyd Reese. The record stores were mainly for white people. man. Harry Carney also studied with him and so did Ben Webster and Buddy Collette.you could hardly hear the piano-and the 6 . (In my era the record stores weren’t crowded with The Beatles’ records or rock & roll or hillbilly. the struggle and the initiative are not as strong as they are for a person who has to struggle and therefore has more to say. When Art found out I was studying with Lloyd. I didn’t know the title at the time. But it wasn’t a big market then. I remember my favorites: Debussy. Lloyd Reese taught Eric Dolphy. Ravel. he knew jazz and all the fundamentals of music from the beginning. Stravinsky and I liked Richard Strauss very much-the one who wrote “Death and Transfiguration. Art Tatum highly recommended him. I remember he turned a record on to me one time. They had classical music. to name a few.) And he could play anything.” The timpani was playing and the basses were playing and the piano was playing a percussional sound with the bass.”) In any case I remember one day when I came to Lloyd’s house. he asked me to come and play for him. I said: “Whaaa? What is that?” So I’m saying briefly that people don’t know what a black man (it’s nice to say black man)-people don’t know what it took to make a jazz musician. It wasn’t called ear training. It was the only music we were exposed to. he would say you were crazy. we were raised more on classical music than on any other kind. each jazz musician is supposed to be a composer. however. the trumpets were playing cock valves. other than the church choir. In my young days. F an octave down and ended A natural. G. But my point about Reese is that if you told the average person Lloyd Reese took the music of Stravinsky off a record. Today. and this cat said: “Well. As I was saying. B flat. I don’t listen to that many people. I don’t know how they train kids musically. B flat. which clashed against the B flat the clarinets were playing in the E. and it made a beautiful sound. who have the capability of hearing and reproducing what they hear. He would just say: ”Now you take the trumpet part. G. There are millions of musicians. D natural line. and he played E. I wasn’t raised in a whore house (there wasn’t any music in them. I probably 7 .” and he took a C-Seventh chord-I remember it started on the Third. I wasn’t raised in a night club. here it is.in the bars). Whether he is or not. I don’t know what he called it. Now.flutes were playing syncopated chop rhythms. and he said: “This is what the clarinets are doing…” and he began to decipher down what was going on. anyway. and D natural. B flat. If I did. He said: “Here’s the French horn part” and it came in on G. D. I don’t know. I imagine. what’s the French horn doing?” It was to show you structure. In other words. I am sure they could have upset the world. it was just exercising his theory. 8 .” Their solos are new classical compositions within the structured form they used. As a youth I read a book by Debussy and he said that as soon as he finished a composition he had to forget it because it got in the way of his doing anything else new and different. Bud wrote a few things and so did Bird. If they had. and Tatum knew every tune written. He wasn’t as melodically inventive as Bud. to be able to create-with new and good melodic structureson such simple chord progressions). And I believed him. It is too bad for us that they didn’t compose the whole piece instead of using other people’s tunes to work within. But as far as making that original melodic concept. I would say he did it more in a chordal-structure sense. He was technically flashy and he knew so much music and so much theory that he couldn’t come up with anything wrong. they did things like “All The Things You Are” and “What Is This Thing Called love. they would have been put in the same class as Bartok and Debussy-to anyone who knows. For instance.wouldn’t play half as much to satisfy myself. and I think it got in the way of his composition. including the classics. as Bird and Bud did. I used to work with Tatum. because he wasn’t a Bud Powell. even though they worked within a structured context using other people’s compositions. if they had created anything complex. But they were still within the simple chord changes you were used to—either the blues (which shows how great they really were. Bud and Bird to me should go down as composers. Art didn’t do this for me in a linear sense. Bird called me on the phone one day and said: “How does this sound?” and he was playing. or lullaby. and it sounded beautiful. It’s like living in a vacuum and not paying attention to anything that came before you. I mean the structures have paid no attention to the past history of music. when they should say those guys are a bitch in C-natural. The music I’ve heard from 9 . For God’s sake. rid this society of some of the noise so that those who have ears will be able to use them some place listening to good music. on this form-the old western form of classical music-I’d like to write a suite of three or four hours and have a solo in spots that is like Charlie Parker. section of Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite! I imagine he had been doing it all through the record. Even tune structures are stolen. but he just happened to call me at that time and that was the section he was playing his ad lib solo on. playing ad lib. What’s worse is that critics take a guy who only plays in the key of C and call him a genius. with Bird in mind. myself. It’s as if people came to Manhattan and acted like it was still full of trees and grass and Indians instead of concrete and tall buildings. I said it earlier.For instance. When I say good I don’t mean that today’s music is bad because it is loud. I think the music on this record is serious in every sense. It’s like a tailor cutting clothes without knowing the design. let my children have music. after written. I say. I’d like to write a symphony.ad-libbing-to the Berceuse. Pop music is still another story. Nothing is simple. It gave me an idea about what is wrong with presentday symphonies: they don’t have anything going on that captures what the symphony is itself. turn it upside down-alter you wrote a certain movement-eight or ten bars-copy it upside down. turn the page over and copy it backwards and upside down. more or less. Other musicians recognize it. For instance. but I don’t think it is important enough to them to say anything about it. They add words to a solo with a few of the notes left out. certain tunes. To me that’s not spiritual music.” “Nature Boy. This would give you eighty bars or more of the same mood without working for it. But what they do. all through The Beatles’ music.” I hear these tunes.the late pop groups (many of which are from England) seems to stem from a mixture of many different American composers and American music. I think it is evident when a person is stealing or copying a form of music which is not his own. doesn’t the public. or don’t the critics point it out? I heard a lot of Bird’s solos in the music of this past and present rock music era. That is what it sounds like to me and others I’ve discussed it with. 10 . is just take a melody created by a jazz soloist and put words to it. from the end of the page back. at least. for instance. It seems to me that it should come from the heart. Why. then copy it backwards. even though it’s composed. But it doesn’t come out ringing true to me as English composition. It’s the same as taking a tape recorder melody and splicing it up several thousand different ways. It leaves the feeling and emotion out.” “Ain’t Necessarily So. Schillinger used to say that you could take a sheet of music. ” I Found A New Baby. I don’t know if they just surround themselves with this kind of music and compose from it. The names are not important. He used a special 11 . In fact. oboe. started including these instruments in our music. Maynard Ferguson. or the pyrotechniques of Dizzy Gillespie. maybe a flute now and then or a clarinet (not too many of our “bad”—that is great-people go for the clarinet. saxophone. the spontaneous composers. let my children have music. Probably because there is not much work available for clarinetists. you never hear that kind of highnote playing in symphonic works). Stravinsky wrote a piece for a high trumpet. trombone.As I say. the range has doubled in octaves. nowadays? If you stop and take note of what jazz has done. and the kind of musicianship which has developed from each instrument (take the trumpet: Louis Armstrong. except for those who play in the studios). That is probably why most European musicians now choose to be jazz musicians rather than classical players because they are always proving that the instrument can do more than is possible. who wants to be in the symphony anyway. Jazz —the way it has been handled in the past —stifles them so that they believe only in the trumpet. King Oliver. lull percussion. it would open everything up. I think it is time our children were raised to think they can play bassoon. it becomes obvious that it has made each player a virtuoso. violin. But it is not enough. The results would be-well the Philharmonic would not be the only answer for us then. it would get rid of prejudice because the musicianship would be so high in caliber that the symphony couldn’t refuse us. Cat Anderson. English horn. For instance. cello. If we so-called jazz musicians who are the composers. I mean. French horn. higher than piccolos. And he was just playing the notes-not the embellishments or the sound that Jimmy was getting. technical. Hobart Dotson. King Oliver. Clifford Brown. And take Jimmy Knepper. McPherson and Bird. And they can play. He said it was one of the most technical exercises he had ever attempted to play. They are all virtuosi. The same goes for string bass. involved. Fats Novarro. So do Maynard Ferguson. difficult. The same goes for saxophone. educated lines that have melodic sense. Not noise. That about covers it. My children! You do what you want with your own! 12 . One of his solos was taken off a record of mine and written out for classical trombone in my ballet. for hours on end. Louis Armstrong. Let my children have music! Let them hear live music. Ernie Royal. Kenny Durham. do with ease as well as human warmth and beauty.trumpet—a piccolo trumpet—to play high. alone. Snooky Young. for example. But anything Milhaud has done in classical music. The trombone player could barely play it. Dizzy Gillespie. Freddie Webster. Tommy Dorsey. although it is not used much in symphony. raised the range of the trombone two octaves. There are many other instruments besides the trumpet which jazz musicians have made do the impossible. Britt Woodman raised it three. but Cat Anderson played off the piano with an ordinary trumpet-played higher than the piano goes.
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