Mingus: Understanding His Album, Tijuana Moods —Guest Post by Stefano Zenni
[Stefano Zenni is one of the finest jazz scholars anywhere, but his work is not well known outside of his native Italy. He has published a few articles in English, and his essay for the boxed set of Mingus’s Atlantic recordings was nominated for a Grammy. And you can read his extensive essay on Mingus’s recordings of the 1940s here. In case that link doesn’t work, here is a PDF, but missing the notated music examples:
He has published in Italian a history of jazz from a global perspective, as well as his book on Mingus, mentioned in the essay, which is the only study to focus entirely on Mingus’s innovative compositions. He is currently working on a book about Coltrane’s music. In Italy, Stefano teaches jazz history at the Conservatory G.B. Martini in Bologna, and is artistic director of the Torino Jazz Festival. Starting with today’s post I will be making more of his work available in English. Zenni has adapted this essay from his book on Mingus’s music.]
THE INNOVATIONS OF MINGUS’S ALBUM TIJUANA MOODS
by Stefano Zenni
The piece “Pithecanthropus Erectus” from 1956 is often cited as a landmark in the work of Charles Mingus, and for good reason. But the album Tijuana Moods from the following year is possibly even more seminal in the evolution of Mingus's musical language. The adoption of elements of Hispanic folklore – in particular the harmonic pedal and rhythmic ostinatos – led him to shatter the traditional concept of theme, to create the “extended chorus” (as I will explain), to open up the form to indeterminacy, and to mix different sounds and rhythmic traditions.
The album was recorded in two sessions on July 18 and August 7, 1957, with a sextet featuring Clarence Shaw on trumpet, Jimmy Knepper on trombone, Shafi Hadi on alto sax, Bill Triglia on piano, Mingus on bass, and Dannie Richmond on drums. On “Ysabel’s Table Dance,” Ysabel Morel is added on voice and castanets and Frankie Dunlop plays drums/percussion. [Lew notes: This was Dunlop’s first recording except for an obscure session in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1948.] The production was elaborate and complex, as jazz historian Brian Priestley recounts in the liner notes of Bluebird's “First Editions” reissue. In the same booklet, the producer Ben Young explains that all the tracks underwent intensive editing, and the final result, obtained by splicing together the best-played fragments, is very far from the original plan for the compositions as conceived by Mingus. Above all, “Ysabel's Table Dance" and “Los Mariachis” were completely transformed.
Thanks to the 2001 Bluebird release with the alternate takes, I was able to compare the edited versions with the complete ones and thus trace the original forms of the compositions, published in my 2002 Italian book on Mingus's music. (It is now out of print, but available in PDF by emailing to stefano@stefanozenni.com ) The original structures reveal a revolutionary conception of form which was unheard of in the late 1950s.
Among the many formal innovations created by Mingus, one of the most original and influential is the so-called “extended chorus," which expands the range and form of the traditional chorus. Mingus's music is intimately associated with large dimensions, with structures that go beyond the boundaries of traditional forms: His art requires large spaces. The traditional song chorus has a limited extension, usually thirty-two bars, which can reach sixty-four when the duration of the chords is doubled, as for example in “Cherokee.” The dominant formal models are AABA and ABAC, with some variations. Although Mingus had employed them for a long time, they had too many limitations to contain his compositional ideas. The main limitation was the short breath of the refrain and the high rate of repetition of the sections (in AABA, A appears three times). From his earliest orchestral essays, Mingus's music always aspired to storytelling with a broad horizon, and this need grew in the mid-1950s, when the composer began to entrust his soloists with the roles of characters telling their own version of the “story.”
The extended chorus stems precisely from this need: to create a refrain that is remarkably long and contains a variety of episodes that are not themes in themselves, but are distinguished by differences in character, speed, meter, tonality, and harmonic progression. Each soloist must follow the entire path of the chorus, which heavily influences the direction of the solo but offers the performer, stimulated by different situations, an unprecedented range of possibilities, to which he or she tries to give narrative coherence.
Over the years, Mingus explored many variations of the extended chorus, offering the jazz repertoire a vast array of formal solutions. Another innovation is the introduction of episodes of indeterminate length. He introduced them for the first time in “Pithecantropus Erectus," where the B sections of the ABAB' chorus are of indeterminate length: the duration of the episode changes each time. The soloist cues when he is ready to move on. Today, those sections are commonly known as “open sections,” but in 1956 they were an absolute novelty.
In “Ysabel's Table Dance,” Mingus reaches one of the pinnacles of integration between chorus and indeterminacy. As the formal diagram shows below, Mingus includes entire sections on pedals at various points in the chorus, both in the Spanish “paso doble” rhythm, and in swing tempo, as well as some cadenzas in free time, as we will explain. These are the flexible areas for both collective and solo improvisations. Thus, the form expands or contracts from within, making the profile of the chorus extremely mobile. The variability depends on the interaction between the musicians, the character of the soloist, and the guidance of the leader.
But let’s look at the form in more detail. The take chosen for analysis is H4JB 5226-1/3A/9, which, although the result of editing, presents the complete structure. (It’s not unusual for longer jazz pieces to be spliced together from different takes.) Obviously, the performance of these alternate takes is weakened by uncertainties, passages that are too long or too short, hesitations, and errors. But thanks to them, we have a true picture of Mingus's thinking.
Please follow the recording with my chart below it. Above each line are letters that indicate the sections being played; so, for example, when the letter “a” comes back, that means the same melody comes back that was played at “a” the first time. Below the line is the number of measures. An “X” indicates an open section, without a specified number of measures. Below that line in red are the timings on the recording. The other abbreviations should be clear, such as “I” (introduction), “flam” (flamenco), “unis” (played in unison), “impr. coll” (collective improvisation), “cad” (cadenza), “tr” (transition), and “pf” (pianoforte, aka piano).
Although at first the piece seems to have a bewildering number of starts, stops, and new sections, I have lined it up in my chart so that you can see that it actually goes through a kind of “chorus” structure, three times (see the three lines below—each one starts with aba/ c…/ cadenza, etc.). Under each staff, the keys are written in solfege—DO for C (as in do, re, mi), MI for E, MIm for E minor, MI7 for E7 (mixolydian).
Let’s listen, while watching the chart below:
The coda ends with two notes played in unison. Afterward, Mingus says a few words but it’s hard to understand what he says.
Mingus makes much use of the traditional paso doble rhythm. Here is an example from YouTube—you probably have heard this rhythm before. To better match the Mingus tempo, set the speed option for 1.25:
The extended chorus consists of various episodes that alternate between paso doble rhythms, fast 4/4 swing breaks, and free solo cadenzas. Improvised polyphony flourishes on the long Hispanic passages, where the paso doble rhythm, outlined now by the double bass or by the trumpet, acts as a pivot, something that connects two sections.
The swing episodes feature bop themes in unison for trumpet, trombone, and alto sax, while the free cadenzas mix blues phrases and flamenco elements. In the themes as well, Mingus does not merely juxtapose different traditions, but blends them. For example, in bars 3-4 of section “b,” the paso doble rhythm reappears with extreme naturalness; then, at the end of the next theme “a,” there is an almost cross-fade transition from swing to flamenco. Let’s listen to that excerpt again, starting with the “b” section:
The same theme can take two forms: theme “c” is based on the flamenco scale. It appears for the first time at 1:50 on the paso doble rhythm, and prepares the collective improvisation. Later, at 10:35, it is varied so that we call it c’—it is supported by 4/4 swing and again leads to collective polyphony. Here are those two versions of theme c:
The only other written theme is “d,” which appears just once, near the end, and has a melody that ends like theme “a.” Here we witness the crumbling not only of the traditional concept of the refrain, but also of the “exposition” of the theme, which Mingus had already seriously weakened in “Love Chant” and “Passions of a Woman Loved.” “Ysabel's Table Dance” does not have a single “theme,” but is articulated in a broad narrative arc that opens with the rhythm of paso doble, unfolds through bop themes, explodes into collective jazz or Spanish-style improvisations, and remains suspended on free cadenzas, through various harmonic, rhythmic, dynamic, and texture areas, often with fluctuating boundaries and indefinite durations. There is nothing like this in the music of those years: such a wealth of material and such compositional complexity are an absolute novelty.
Furthermore, although it is not a “theme,” this extended chorus is the organizing principle on which the soloist moves, bound to a path that, however varied and blurred, is still well defined. In fact, the diagram shows, in its three lines, that “Ysabel's Table Dance” consists of only three extended choruses. The first and last serve as the “exposition,” while the second is reserved for a single soloist, alto saxophonist Shafi Hadi, who juggles the complicated structure with delightful bop and blues inventions. Hadi is thus stimulated to take on a completely new solo challenge: on the one hand, the form opens up new possibilities for him, but on the other, it binds him to the composer's path. The soloist has also several ad libitum areas at his disposal, each with a different character, This dialectic between improvisation and written composition is one of the innovative aspects that jazz has brought to 20th-century music. “Ysabel's Table Dance” thus opens up a new frontier in the integration of extended choruses, polyphony, and sections of indeterminate length.
“Los Mariachis,” also from the album Tijuana Moods, is built on a further and even more rare variation of the extended chorus, organized internally as a classical rondo—that is, a main theme that serves as the “home base” to return to after each “excursion” (take H4JB 5227-4/11/15/11/24). In the following diagram, “cad scritta” means “cadenza written” (with some room for improvisation), as opposed to “cad impr,” that is, fully improvised. And “polif” indicates “polyphony,” a section where everybody plays, but it is not quite collective improvisation because each wind instrument is working with an assigned theme. For sections that are repeated, I give two timings, one for the first time and one for the second time. Again, let’s watch the chart while we listen:
There are sections of indeterminate length, but unlike in “Ysabel's Table Dance,” here Mingus for each section writes a theme with a distinct melodic profile, through which we are constantly thrown between two atmospheres, as in a film montage: on the one hand, the American jazz narrator—embodied in the swing of section A—on the other, the music of Mexican mariachis—evoked in the calypso of section C or in the melancholic polyphony of B. Ultimately, the choice of a rondo form is a perfect way to “dramatize” this dialogue between rhythms and cultures.
The two extended choruses for solos are each split between two improvisers: trombone and piano, and alto sax and trumpet. And the reprise of the theme is shortened, leading to an odd, melancholic end.
By the way, the bass line of the B section reappears in 1963 in “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady,” near the end of track A (5:37), played at a faster tempo by the tuba. Here is that bass line from “Los Mariachis,” followed by “The Black Saint..”:
Today we understand that Tijuana Moods anticipated the modal jazz of the late 1950s, the open forms adopted by Miles Davis in the late 1960s, the Third World exoticism of Charlie Haden, and even today's World Music. The key that opened this new world to Mingus was Mexican folklore, or more generally Latin American folklore: In fact, we will see in a future essay how those musical traditions inspired all of Mingus's music.
So this revolutionary album could have had an enormous influence if only it had been released on time: instead, Vik, a commercial sub-label of RCA, was cancelled immediately after the recording, and the album only saw the light of day in 1962, five years later, when, thanks to Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, modal harmony, open form and collective improvisation were already established in the jazz language.
[Thank you, Stefano! We look forward to more of your insights.
All the best,
Lewis ]
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During the 70's the Newport Jazz Festival often happened over several weeks with nighttime (sometimes midnight) performances around town, often reenacting classic jazz records. I particularly enjoyed Sarah Vaughan with Michel Legrand and McCoy Tyner Fly with the Wind, both at Lincoln Center with full string orchestras.
Tijuana Moods was presented at Carnegie Hall, Jimmy Knepper and Dannie Richmond from the original, George Adams on tenor, Danny Mixon piano (and dance), not sure about trumpet. That night I decided Knepper was the best trombonist I'd ever heard, an opinion I retain. The original arrangements were retained first chorus or two before extended choruses. An abstract, Spanish-flavored dance troupe joined in for most tunes, some or all musicians laying out a few moments during the extensions. Mixon would leave the piano to add his own interpretations (the real thing), integrated with the troupe or solo. Mingus played at his usual lofty musical level, seemed in great spirits, not overly dominant as his occasional practice, especially appreciative of the dancers' contributions. For me the concert succeeded completely, an evening that lives with me.
What a deep dive! Much obliged!