Beneath the Underdog: His World as Composed by Mingus

Mingus is larger than life, often misunderstood, for his genius was secondary to his volatility. He recounts his survival in face of all the obstacles facing the African American male in America between and after the world wars. This autobiography reflects the experiences of Malcolm X as a brilliant child with dreams and hopes inspite of social station, and the rebellion against the realities of American apartheid, political and cultural. There is a melding of the two mens experiences and hence, there reactions and decisions later in life are played out according to that feeling of being cheated of a full life and exceling out of that rebellion to the vapid square society that attempts to tame them...make them less than what they know they are.

This is a biography more about feeling, than facts...these are stories of a life transposed and abstracted in such a way as to deal with the real pain of one's life. Like his music, it is dark and then jubilant, rhythmic and chaotic...abysmally profane and absolutely sacred. There is a lessonn here and a cry for social justice...Mingus was a fighter, a cimmarron, a rebel, a subversive, a palmarista, a priest and a prophet...and a man, a living feeling sensitive man whose beauty is yet again seen tragically in hindsight. This is literary music, approach it that way. There are essentials truths here. Read the book and find them.