Allen Michie

Jazztodon artist of the week: Charles Mingus! Born to mixed-race parents in Nogales, Ariz., Mingus grew up in Los Angeles. In a 1962 interview, Mingus notes he was light-skinned; he didn't fit in with the Black, white or Mexican kids at school. He played the trombone, then the cello, but switched to bass when he was 16 because, at the time, it was impossible for a Black man to find work playing classical music. Mingus drew on traditions that ranged from ragtime to the avant-garde, and his compositions expressed an equally broad range of emotion. "I can play a sad thing, you recognize it because you're used to that. I can play an angry tune, GRRRRR. I can play happy little ditties like I do with my baby, you know? It's all kinds of emotions to play in music but what I'm trying to play is very difficult because I'm trying to play the truth of what I am." #jazz #charlesmingus #mingus

Jazztodon artist of the week: Scott Joplin! From @aaj@jazztodon.com : Scott Joplin personified ragtime; he was its chief champion, the figure most closely associated with its composition. It was Joplin's short, hard-driving melodies- -and the syncopated backbone he furnished them—that helped define the musical parameters of ragtime, a style that gave voice to the African American experience during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In a move not uncommon for young blacks at the time, Joplin left home in his early teens, working as an itinerant pianist at honky-tonks and salons of the Midwest, South, and Southwest. The true origin of the music was to be found in these low rent musical halls. The signature fast and frenetic pace of ragtime reflected the jubilant side of the black experience—compared with the melancholy-heavy blues—and the music became, according to Blesh and Janis, America's "most original artistic creation." #jazz #scottjoplin #ragtime

@jeffjarvis I didn’t have that one on my 2026 bingo card.

@catsalad@infosec.exchange 🙄

@jmuscara@jazztodon.com @georgetakei@universeodon.com Yeah, well, re-post this sometime when Donald Trump isn't on the ballot. You can rebuild the foundation sometime when the whole house isn't on fire.