Memories of Mingus--and a Lot More

It’s a hot day in May in a steaming neighborhood here. And the temperature is even higher inside this high-ceilinged rehearsal studio situated next to an auto repair shop, in a building at the nexus of Latin, Asian and African American communities.

Too hot for musicians to be rehearsing, but that isn’t slowing bassist Miles Perkins and his imaginatively named group, Mingus Amungus. With a gig in Alaska awaiting them the coming weekend, and a major appearance pending at the Playboy Jazz Festival, there’s no time to waste.

Still, as the rehearsal begins to come together, the dark humor characteristic of jazz musicians quickly surfaces. Saxophonist Joshi Marshall, referring to a recent gig at what might best be described as a difficult venue, notes that he has just had a conversation with the event’s producer.

“You know what she said to me at the break?” Marshall says. “She said, ‘This is one of the most successful concerts we’ve ever had. No one’s been mugged yet.’ ”

“Did she really say, ‘yet’?” responds pianist Muziki Roberson.

The banter continues briefly, until Perkins calls up the first tune, a new version of a Charles Mingus classic, “Far Wells, Mill Valley,” and the rehearsal kicks into gear. But Mingus Amungus, reflecting on many levels the method of the legendary jazz composer-bassist who is the 12-member group’s inspiration, assembles the music in an all-join-in, improvisatory style.

At one point, a detailed discussion breaks out between Roberson and trombonist Marty Wehner regarding a fine point in the harmonization of a specific phrase. It takes a good 10 minutes to resolve the issue.

Then, when two of the dancers who also perform with the group--Carolyn Himes and Valeria Rossi--begin to execute a series of choreographed movements, problems of synchronization arise. Segments of a piece are played over and over to give Rossi (who is married to the group’s drummer, Steve Rossi) the opportunity to fit the Hungarian-born dancer’s gypsy twirls to the music.

Perkins, concerned about some rough spots in the last segment of the piece, says, “Watch it when we get to the back side of the tune.”

And Roberson, glancing toward the dancers, slips in a sotto voce reply, “Don’t worry. We’re watching.”

The rehearsal process is a direct reflection of what the thoughtful Perkins has had in mind since he founded Mingus Amungus in 1993, which he seemed destined for. Growing up in a music-filled household, he was entranced, at an early age, by Mingus’ bass playing. Assigned a cello in elementary school, Perkins tried to play it in pizzicato, jazz bass fashion, and was quickly given the opportunity to learn the larger instrument. He attended Berkeley High School and participated in a jazz program that also produced Joshua Redman, the Saturday Night Live Band’s Lenny Pickett and saxophonists Dave Ellis and Peter Apfelbaum.

After graduating from UCLA in 1991 with a degree in philosophy, he returned to the Bay Area, where he freelanced with numerous bands, but the idea of assembling a Mingus-styled ensemble was ever present.

“It actually came together,” he recalls, “when this place was doing some solo series concerts, first by instruments--a guitar night, a percussion night and so forth--then nights devoted to the music of individual artists such as Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter. They asked me to do a Mingus night, so I put together a band. After we were finished that night I was [thinking], ‘Man, I have to do this.’ Because the music was so cool, and then because the name--Mingus Amungus--just popped into my head.”

Perkins was nervous about creating an ensemble whose very name identified it with a specific artist and his music, especially one with such a unique approach to jazz. Mingus’ music is a spontaneous blending of improvisational and composed elements, rich with blues and gospel references, energized by the surging rhythm provided by his bass and--on most of his later recordings--the drums of Dannie Richmond.

Perkins was well aware that other groups--Mingus Dynasty, for one--had made efforts to reinterpret Mingus’ music, and that it would be difficult to find a group identity that was not completely enveloped by the bassist’s musical persona.

“I also knew,” he says, “that I didn’t want to be restricted to just doing Mingus pieces, and I was aware that a lot of traditionalists wouldn’t appreciate our going in and doing a hip-hop thing or adding dance. But someone gave a tape to his widow, Sue. And when she called me a few days later, I was thinking, ‘Oh boy, here it comes.’ But when I returned the call, she was totally into it--like ‘Keep it up!’--and she periodically calls and has been totally supportive.”

“Their music is totally in the Mingus spirit,” said Sue Mingus, speaking by phone from her home in New York City. “The dancers, rappers, drummers and the lights give the music an excitement and a fidelity. I’m sure Charles would have been knocked out by it.”

Critics have been knocked out by the ensemble’s live show. A 1998 review in the San Francisco Chronicle said Mingus Amungus “was killing the crowd at the Monterey Jazz Festival with an entertaining mix of jazz and rap, Haitian dancing and Brazilian drumming.”

In addition to having a considerably broader agenda than the re-creation of classic Mingus works, Perkins was in search of a more intangible aspect of the bassist-composer’s style.

“It wasn’t just the music,” he says. “It was that, plus the whole concept of what Mingus was about--the driving rhythm section, the battling horns. And, above all, the willingness to break out of the box, to take musical risks. Joshi Marshall . . . says he wants to be on the edge, to feel as though he’s playing for his life, as though this time might be the last time he gets to play, so he’d better put his all into it. And I think that whole attitude is kind of what this band is all about.”

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The band’s only CD was recorded during a tour to Cuba. It has not yet made a label deal. Perkins has already paid for a completed second album and is considering distribution options.

Aside from keeping Mingus’ musical adventurousness alive, Mingus Amungus is also about multiculturalism in music, about the connections among jazz, dance and rap, and the intersection of elements, literally from around the globe, that are beginning to transform jazz in the 21st century.

If there is a single theme to this year’s Playboy Festival, scheduled Saturday and next Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl, it is multiculturalism, evident in a lineup of artists that reaches from the smooth jazz of Boney James and Rick Braun and the nouveau swing of Big Bad Voodoo Daddy through the straight-ahead music of the Count Basie Orchestra; from Wynton Marsalis and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra to Ruben Blades, Los Van Van and Celia Cruz; from the Afro-Latin band Ozomatli and tenor saxophone playing of emerging superstar David Sanchez to the stirring sounds of South African bassist Richard Bona and the jazz funk of John Scofield.

And no individual act symbolizes the width and breadth of that diversity any better than Mingus Amungus--different in race, background, age (25-53) and creative focus, but unified in its musical quest.

“Start with me,” says Perkins, 30, who balances his busy music schedule with a day job at George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic. “I’m mixed. My mother passed away when I was 10, and my dad remarried a Japanese woman. My little brother’s half-Japanese and half-black. My older brother’s white, and I have another brother who’s black [from both parents’ previous marriages]. And we’re all brothers. So I understand cultures and I see how they work.

“And the thing that’s important about how they come together is the same thing that’s important about this band--that it’s not about being a melting pot. It’s about tolerance, about understanding what another culture is, and never putting one culture under another. In the music and the dance that we do, I don’t want to bastardize either one. When we do an African Haitian thing with a jazz thing, I want to be sure that the essential rhythms that are the backbone of Haitian dance are there, and not make one thing subservient to the other.”

That sounds like a difficult task, given the different individuals in Mingus Amungus, and given the problems associated with putting artists from jazz, dance and rap--as well as from different cultural milieus--together into a unified entity.

“Sure it is,” Perkins agrees. “And it takes work. I was talking to someone once and he was getting the idea from me that it was all about peace and harmony. But it’s not. Sometimes, yes. And sometimes, no. And you have to go head to head sometimes to figure out how it’s supposed to go. And that means all the parties concerned have to be willing to work it out.

“I mean, we’ve got Steve Rossi on drums, a fourth-generation Italian from North Beach who walks through his neighborhood like it’s a little town, with everybody speaking to him. Then we’ve got Baba Ray Graham on percussion, from New York and a broken home, heavily into African music. And one of our dancers, Laila Jenkins, comes from Oakland, from a background with the attitude of ‘kill whitey.’ But they’ve become a family, and no one’s given anything up about who they are. We let each other know when something pisses us off, and we resolve it before it gets into angry confrontation. And that’s one of the most important aspects of this band.”

The rehearsal continues as Martin G. Reynolds--a.k.a. Drosa--one of the two rappers, arrives. (The other is Anita Johnson, a.k.a. Reign.) Like Perkins, Reynolds is well-educated (a degree in journalism from San Francisco State) and employed elsewhere (as an editor-writer for the Oakland Tribune).

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Reynolds barely gets started with one of his feature numbers before a problem arises. Should the horn section, led by trumpeter Gavin Distassi, play a bright figure at a point in which Reynolds moves from chanted rap to more melodic phrasing? The discussion drifts back and forth, with Distassi occasionally playing a line to make his case.

At one point, Reynolds refers to a specific phrase in his rap, and Roberson--to Reynolds’ amused dismay--doesn’t seem to be aware of it at all.

“I wonder,” says a bystander, “if he ever plays a standard without knowing the lyrics.”

After the number is finally rehearsed, Perkins recalls the incident as an example of his belief in one of the core missions of Mingus Amungus.

“It was interesting, wasn’t it?” he says. “Muziki hasn’t been listening to what Martin is saying in his rap. And that emphasizes my feeling that this society has serious issues between the generations. People are scared of their kids, and kids have no respect for their parents. Why can’t we all go to a concert and enjoy something together?

“I’ve had kids come up and tell me that we’ve turned them on to Mingus. And I’ve had parents say, ‘You know, I really hated this hip-hop, I couldn’t listen to it at all. But now I listen and I can hear it. It’s the voice of the street.’

“The fact is,” Perkins says, “that I really don’t care if someone doesn’t enjoy all of our music. If they enjoy half of what they hear, and they’re with their kid and the kid enjoys the other half, then we’ve done what we came to do.”

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The 22nd annual Playboy Jazz Festival. Saturday and next Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. Information: (310) 449-4070. Tickets available from the Hollywood Bowl, (323) 850-2000, or Ticketmaster outlets. (General seating available for Sunday’s performance, obstructed-view seats only for Saturday’s program.)