In my early 20’s, when I was working at the monastery, a friend of mine worked near by. He would come over on Tuesday nights for barbecue. We hung out. Sometime around November, we realized that neither of us had plans for Thanksgiving. Being young and single, we decided to do something dumb. The dumbest thing that we could think up was to drive to New York City for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
We left at about 5pm on Wednesday. It’s a good 12 hour drive to New York. Plus we had to drive out to Long Island to the house of a friend’s parents. We could walk to the train from there, but it was about an hour into the city. When we got to the house, we fell asleep. When we woke up, it was after 9. We got some coffee, got on the train, got to the city, and got to 34th Street just in time to see Santa go by. Then we got Greek omelets.
Later that night, we went to see the Charles Mingus Big Band at the Fez. The entrance to the club was in the middle of another club, down so many flights of stairs that I thought we were descending to the PATH tunnels. We were close enough to the subway to feel the trains right below our feet. In that tightly packed spot, we could also hear the musicians call out to one another as their instruments wove and wailed between them.
I don’t remember listening to much Charles Mingus before that. We were there because of Ted. He knew music much better than I. I do remember being enraptured by this big band that played as if they were performing Dixieland jazz: everybody soloing at once. The song that blew me away was the “Haitian Fight Song.” It’s primal urgency and sense of unity made me want to lead my people in revolution.
Against whom, I can’t tell you. People who use the word “whom” are often the ones at the business end of a revolution. But still, Charles Mingus was brilliant. He played bass on that Charlie Parker recording we listened to before, but he was not stuck in the mode of jazz he came up through. He extended jazz both forward and back to bring the roots to a new generation. If I ever have a large black dog, I’m naming him Mingus.