FIRST THINGS first. Yes, he is related. In fact, he s the son of Charles Mingus, composer, philosopher, poet, writer, arranger, bass sorcerer and author of such jazz landmarks as Mingus Ah-Um, The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady and Blues & Roots. It s taken Eric Mingus long enough to come out from under the shadow of his old man, but at last his first major musical statement Um . . . Er . . . Uh . . . is out there on the Some label.
It s an uneven but promising work which fuses free verse, warm soul and organic funk chops. Mingus Jr. has a way to go before honing a coherent style, but at his best, titles like Didn t I Blow Your Mind and I Reject This Reality call to mind ghetto prophets like Gil Scott Heron, The Last Poets and even Living Colour.
This isn t Mingus first time out of the traps a poetry/music album This Isn t Sex, It s Therapy came out a couple of years ago on the Slam label. But, as Eric admits, once you combine that surname with the twin disciplines of spoken word and bottom end, there s immediately a whole plague of preconceptions with which to contend.
Yeah, and I guess being a Mingus, we don t necessarily stray from things that are hard to do! he chuckles down the line from New York. But I don t really give a shit what anybody else thinks. I m proud to be my Dad s son and I m probably one of the biggest fans of his work, but also I feel like I can do my own thing and that voice is legitimate.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Eric Mingus believes that the spirit of jazz is currently better served by the pulse of hardcore house and hip hop or the fever pitch of performance-poetry slams.
I think the current state of jazz is pretty horrendous, he maintains. And I mean no offence, a lot of friends of mine are jazz musicians and they make great music, but I just think that the worst thing that happened to jazz was trying to put it on this pedestal. I was brought up listening to a lot of jazz but I was (also) very much into r&b and dance music. And then after my Dad died, that s sort of when the change came, I got more into rock n roll, I got really into The Who and I abandoned a lot of more groove orientated music at the time. I m a big Parliament/Funkadelic fan and now I m coming back around to getting back to that style.
Does Eric sense an academic resistance to the idea of jazz as a gut rather than head music?
Especially my father s music, he confirms. I think I ve run into more rock n roll guys who really loved what he did: Jack Bruce, Pete Townsend, they really got that energy from him. And in my mind I see an energy that s very similar, from Mingus to some of the real progressive rock n roll and hip hop that s out there.
Of course, many of those rock n rollers including Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Elvis Costello, Henry Rollins and Vernon Reid were enlisted by producer Hal Willner for his excellent 1992 project Weird Nightmare Meditations On Mingus. More recently, Mingus Jr. also found himself under Willner s direction at last year s Meltdown Festival in London and again in New York, as part of a house band assembled to perform selections from Harry Smith s seminal Anthology Of American Folk Music.
I don t know that it necessarily made the money for the archives that they intended, but it was a lot of fun, is his verdict. It s real music of the soul, some real sincere stuff.
Did he have a favourite performance from the two shows?
I really, really liked Gavin Friday a lot. And in fact, I got to sing with him the second night in Brooklyn in New York. He s really just a good spirit. And playing bass for Nick Cave was great too. Knowing those guys just from second hand and stories you read, and then meeting them, it s kind of intimidating. But then, I forget that I actually have something on my side too! It s not that I forget I m his son, but I forget that some people can sort of be, I don t know if in awe is the right word, but it holds a wallop. See, if I realised that, I would totally play it up!
Um . . . Er . . . Uh . . . is out now on Some Records, distributed by Southern Studios.