Mingus and his bass, Bicentennial, Lower Manhattan, 1976. Tom Marcello Webster, New York, USA
Charles Mingus Jr. was born on Friday April 22, 1922, at America’s southern border, in Nogales, Arizona. He is celebrated today as an herald of a new era in jazz improvisation and one of the great bassists and composers of jazz history. Over the course of his three-decade career, he worked with other renowned musicians like Charlie Parker, Eric Dolphy, and Duke Ellington. Mingus pushed the limits of what jazz could be with his raucous, violent, and powerful music, which earned him the nickname “the Volcano” from El País writer Fernando Navarro in 2023. In 1993, when the Library of Congress obtained Mingus’ paper legacy of scores, correspondences, photos, and recordings, the Library described it as “the most important acquisition of a manuscript collection relating to jazz in the Library’s history.” His torch is carried on by bands that play his work like the Mingus Big Band, Mingus Orchestra, and Mingus Dynasty. High school students across the nation compete in the Charles Mingus High School Competition, and even more high school jazzists play his baritone saxophone feature, Moanin’, my own band included. Mingus’ legacy has left an undisputed mark on jazz, even years after his death.
Mingus in 1976 with his bass, age 53.
Mingus’ Haitian Fight Song was released on his seventh album, The Clown, with the Charles Mingus Quintet in September 1957. It is meant to celebrate the Haitian Revolution, which began in 1791 and ended in 1804, and the indomitability and strength of the Haitian people. The Haitian Revolution was history’s first successful slave revolt in more than a thousand years, wherein former slaves overcame their colonisers and formed a new state. It is important to note that the Haitian Revolution had such a profound effect on America’s abolition conversation that then-President Thomas Jefferson refused to establish relations with and imposed an economic embargo on the nation, hoping for its failure. He saw a successful slave revolt in the American sphere as a dangerous example to American slaves.
The song was recorded in either February or March of 1957, in the midst of the heat of the American Civil Rights Movement. In September of that year, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first act of its kind since Reconstruction. The song reflects the tension amid the battle Black Americans had for civil rights and the raw emotions of their fight for liberty and equality.
Haitian Fight Song customarily begins with a no-time bass solo, of which Mingus said:
“My solo in it is a deeply concentrated one. I can’t play it right unless I’m thinking about prejudice and hate and persecution, and how unfair it is. There’s sadness and cries in it, but also determination. And it also ends with my feeling: ‘I told them! I hope somebody heard me.’”
Other instruments are then layered in over the same theme, creating a deeply edgy and bombastic tune. Throughout the song, bluesy, dissonant chords and unique rhythms are an evocation of feelings of defiance, determination, and empowerment. The forms of protest on both the issues of the time and of today in Haitian Fight Song can be heard without words. The song’s end is triumphant, inspiring the people of the time as if a reassurance by Mingus that there will be victory for Black Americans and the marginalised, just as there was for Haiti.
Back then, Haitian Fight Song appealed to the raucous fury of all marginalised people, but especially Black Americans in their struggle for equal rights; equal rights which did not come legally until seven years later in 1964, and which many argue still have not come today. It was a call for the marginalised to rise up, and to view the Haitian Revolution as a beacon of inspiration in their own fights.
Today, Haitian Fight Song serves as both a call to remember the successes of the Haitian Revolution and the Civil Rights Movement and an inspiration to keep up the fight in contemporary times, to propel the world forward on defiant wings; to liberate ourselves from our struggles and fight to create change in the world. Pianist Jason Moran put it best himself in his interview with the New York Times:
“But the political part, I think, is that, because of [Mingus’] generation, he was able to say things with maybe a more pointed tongue than, say, Ellington… So I think he also represents that every generation will have a way that they view the politics and react to it, and the artists will find a way to sew it in so that it hits people differently.”
And that, Mingus did; his sharp tongue was present not only in his music, but in his speech:
“What’s wrong with the world today? Too much compromise, too much mediocrity.”
Charles Mingus’ magnum opus, Haitian Fight Song, calls the oppressed of the world to action, to rid themselves of mediocrity and compromise and force our wills upon the world. The timeless feelings Mingus evokes were important then and are perhaps even more important now. I encourage you, the reader, to listen to Haitian Fight Song yourself as soon as you can; my personal favourite rendition is on the Mingus Big Band’s album Blues and Politics from 2006.
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