Charles Mingus - Cumbia and Jazz Fusion (1978 Japanese Atlantic Stereo LP)

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Sleeve: EX
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Charles Mingus - Cumbia and Jazz Fusion | Vinyl LP - 1978 Japanese Atlantic (P-10531A, Warner-Pioneer Corporation)

Elio Petri made Todo Modo in 1976 as a barely disguised attack on the Italian Christian Democratic Party. He hired Mingus to write the music. Mingus went to Rome, recorded with a local ensemble at Dirmaphon Studio in March and April 1976, and delivered the score. Petri didn't use it. The Atlantic contract gave Mingus the opportunity to record his larger composition in New York in March 1977, and Atlantic released both pieces on a single LP in May 1978.

"Cumbia and Jazz Fusion" is the more ambitious of the two. Mingus assembled 15 musicians including four conga players, a bassoonist and Mauricio Smith on a range of flutes and saxophones alongside the horn players he had been working with through the previous five years. The piece draws on the Afro-Colombian musical tradition of cumbia, the repeated percussion pattern holding the ensemble's collective improvisation together for nearly half an hour. Mingus sings briefly and speaks over the ensemble at one point. Jimmy Knepper's trombone is the clearest voice in the horn section; Ricky Ford's tenor and George Adams's playing give the piece its most searching extended solos.

"Music for Todo Modo" has a different character: darker and more orchestral, closer to film scoring in its texture, the Italian ensemble's oboe and English horn prominent in a way that distinguishes it from anything else in Mingus's late Atlantic recordings. Dannie Richmond plays on both sides, the one constant between the two sessions and two different ensembles.

This is the 1978 Japanese Atlantic pressing (P-10531A), manufactured by Warner-Pioneer Corporation.