Mingus: Giving Zero Fucks

Intro to Music by Mood:

Music is one of those human experience universalities found in the same tier as hunger, emotion and death. Modern humans have been raging up and down the pentatonic scale for tens of thousands of years – probably for as long as there’s been consciousness. Like anything that’s survived in our villages for that long (dogs, tapeworms), music has evolved and responded to our needs. After a few hundo-thousand years of work, we’ve surely captured all known emotions in one song or another.

So, what to do now that all musical points have been charted on our emotional-map?  Enjoy it like responsible adults enjoys wine – in a pairing.

One of the best ways to listen to music is by considering the emotions it brings out of you. So, that’s how this series will guide you.

Now, you can apply it like ointment to either enhance a matching emotion or negate an opposing emotion, to preserve or destroy an emotion. Do what you will with your enhanced musical palate? Well, you said you were the responsible one. It’s your ears – you decide what you put in it.

Musical pairing for:

Simply Not Giving a Fuck = Charles Mingus

There are many universal emotions to pick from, so I decided to begin with a very distinct one on the pleasurable side of the spectrum: Not giving a fuck.

I’m talking about the sadistic kind – not the lazy kind where you sit there for hours, unwashed and odorous. No, I’m referring to the kind that gives you a happy tightness in the throat, stomach and face. It feels like an electric energy that comes from somewhere else and is running closed-circuit inside you.

You’ll look anyone in their eyes and tell them the truth because you’re as lucid and unstirred as can be.

I feel this way often – though regrettably not often enough. It certainly helps the day go by.  Anyway, there’s loads of artists and songs that fit into this category, but I can’t think of any fit better than Charles Mingus’s “Better Git it in Your Soul”:

I recommend you just get his album AH-UM.  It’s full of glittering, sweaty passion and dim-lit madness.

Mingus wastes no time getting to it.

The tempo and floaty wilt of the melody is the audible version of that energy from beyond or who knows where. You should definitely sing along for full effect.

Match the tone of the saxes and bone, and you should start to feel it kicking in.  Don’t be shy, Mingus will sing along with you.

He can be heard screaming like the mad man he was throughout this piece.  But of course, I mean no disrespect. If he wasn’t crazy, he wouldn’t have been Mingus.

The man was a genius,if a bit intolerable. For example: At the beginning of the live album, “Charles Mingus: Nat Hentoff Sessions,” Mingus demanded that nobody clap, buy drinks or use the cash register because he didn’t want to be disrupted.  I’ve even heard a story about him stopping a show because the crowd was too noisy.

His music was as loose and as sloppy as real life. Kurt Bacher, a professional jazz saxophonist, once told me that when playing Mingus you can use any note you want – even the wrong ones _ as long as you’re doing it on purpose.

So hit all those wrong notes when you’re singing along – just pretend you did it on purpose. The point is to NOT GIVE A FUCK.  The backings behind the sax solos sound like they’re the noises a large man laying on his back would make,but they’re strangely full of energy at the same time.

When the band drops out and they clap to keep the beat, it sounds simple, but I dare you to try to clap along. You’ll get it eventually while they’re clapping with you, but try to keep it going by yourself when the band comes back in. I promise you can’t.

You shouldn’t be surprised though. Jazz is a strange thing when you first come to it.  The more time you put into listening to it, the more enjoyable it becomes.So, keep at it.

I hope that in time, you too can take this song and learn to apply it so that it amplifies your zero-fucks buzz or so it makes yous top worrying about shit for seven minutes.  Controlling your emotions is vital to living with someone and you definitely don’t want to die alone, (see documentary “A Certain Kind of Death”).

Patrick Drew can be reached at patrickdrew@gmail.com.