During the second annual Seacoast poetry and jazz festival known as Jazzmouth, which takes place throughout downtown Portsmouth Friday, April 20, through Saturday, April 23, area fans can hear a diverse mix of spoken word and improvised music at a variety of local venues, performed by an equally diverse array of performers.

From headliners Eric Mingus, Marie Harris, Ed Sanders and David Amram to local poets and writers such as Chris Elliot and Young Dawkins, along with local musicians as diverse as Larry Simon and Groove Bacteria, Larry Garland and River City Jazz, the Timberlane High School Jazz Combo, the Ken Clark Organ Trio and Matt Jenson & Acid Reggae, there will be something going on for everyone to enjoy.

The melding of poetry and jazz has been happening for decades. The Beat Poets were famous for incorporating jazz-like phrasing and imagery into their works. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, artists like the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron expanded the musical palette to incorporate blues and soul into their work, while also adding a political/social bent to their words. Today, Mingus and Amram carry on these traditions. Amram collaborated with several of the Beats, most notably with Jack Kerouac, while Mingus expands on the music and social concepts that his father, Charles Mingus, developed in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Yet both Amram and the younger Mingus have their own unique voices.

Still, the opportunities to celebrate this American tradition grow increasingly rare, making Portsmouth once again the site of a truly unique event.

And what better place to sustain this creative blend than the Port City, with its reputation for artistic diversity? Jazz has long been an integral part of the local music scene, thanks to musicians like Larry Garland and local promoters like Bruce Pingree. Thanks to the efforts of Larry Simon with his monthly Beat Night programs at The Press Room, the genres of poetry and jazz have become a regular part of the cultural fabric of the area. Once again, we have folks like Simon, Pingree and a host of others to thank for having the vision and determination to present these art forms in a larger and multi-faceted setting.

Jazzmouth is a coming together to celebrate the creative spirit. Good poetry, like good jazz, represents a high point of spontaneous creativity, and creativity is what feeds the soul and drives the human spirit. In doing so, it helps us all feel a little better about ourselves and our world.                                                                                       

—Alan Chase

so many projects, just enough soul
multi-media artist Eric Mingus

by Sarah Boucher
There are more than a few similarities between music and carpentry. Both require a degree of craftsmanship and an appreciation for the available materials. Both have measures, grooves and tongues. In carpentry, you can decide what you want to build and assemble the pieces needed to complete a specific project, building exactly what you had originally intended. Alternately, you may gain inspiration from a particularly fine-grained or even spectacularly flawed piece of wood and create something entirely new and unexpected as a result.

When not laying down basslines, Eric Mingus lays down baseboards, as both performer and carpenter (among other interests). Mingus and his multiple recordings also meditate on the notion of influence. Like his father, composer and double-bass player Charles Mingus, Eric, too, plays the double-bass, in addition to singing and performing his poetry. The work on his two Some Records recordings, “Um…Uh…Er” and “Too Many Bullets, Not Enough Soul,” covers this paternal influence, in addition to subjects of race, love, identity and family.

On Saturday, April 22, Mingus will perform at the second annual Jazzmouth festival in Portsmouth. He will join fellow headliners David Amram, Ed Sanders and Marie Harris at the South Church at 7 p.m., with readers accompanied by Larry Simon and Groove Bacteria. Tickets are available in advance for $12 at the Press Room and $13 at Bull Moose Music. Tickets will be available for $15 at the door on the evening of the performance.

Like all progeny of the famous, Eric faced a choice early on: to follow the same path and the unavoidable comparisons between his work and that of his celebrated parent or to run screaming in a different direction. He’s done a bit of both. His experience has varied from a stint boxing in his 20s, to running around as a stagehand in a theater production, to working as house martini mixer for Old Grandad Whiskey Company. He studied double-bass and voice for a short period of time at Berklee College of Music before trading in formal schooling for life on the road with Bobby McFerrin, Carla Bley and Karen Mantler.

When asked if being the son of Charles Mingus is a blessing or a curse, Eric Mingus is honest with his answer. In one regard, his famous name can get him into doors that would normally remain closed to others. On the flip side, the cost of this access manifests itself in an unbelievably high level of expectation.

Last week, Eric Mingus was interviewed from upstate New York, where he alternated preparing for his upcoming Jazzmouth performance in Portsmouth with completing some carpentry projects around the house. Mingus shared a list of artists whom he counts among his influences. From Pete Townshend,  Prince and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to King Crimson, Jack Micheline, Fred Astaire, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes and George Adams, Eric Mingus’ work reflects the varied nature of his influences with equal parts poetry, blues, electronica, R&B, rock and a bit of jazz. His work has drawn inferences to Gil Scott-Heron, Marvin Gaye and Jimi Hendrix, among others.

“I kind of had a backwards education musically, I guess you could say,” says Mingus. “I was really presented with classical and jazz music right from the beginning. I remember hearing the music for the movie “Sounder” and being floored by it. I must have been 6 or 7. My dad was there, and I was like ‘What’s this?’ and he said ‘That’s the blues.’”

Eric’s education in the blues included not just Taj Mahal’s “Sounder” soundtrack, but Big Bill Broonzy and Howlin’ Wolf, among others. Mingus would later have the opportunity to play with Howlin’ Wolf’s sideman of 23 years, Hubert Sumlin, on Elliot Sharp’s Terraplan project. “It’s really something to feel the evolution in me from when I first discovered the blues and heard Hubert Sumlin play, and then looking over and realizing that he’s playing guitar with me.”

When asked further about other influences, Eric cited the writing of Richard Wright, Kurt Vonnegut and others. But, he noted, “When you talk about influences… I have to be honest. The real influences in my life were the people in my life.” 

His work is filled with their traces. “Good Buy Pork Pie” pays homage to his father. “His Blood’s In Me” is about his grandfather, who took his own life, never accepting the fact that his daughter had married a black man: “Grandpa blew his brains out in the house. / He didn’t have the courtesy to take it outside, behind the garage…or maybe out in the woods. / Now his stupidity is splattered on the walls for Grandma to stare at.”

Mingus’ poetry describes the violence and influence that the actions of our ancestors can have upon one’s being. Taking exception to the mess created rather than the suicide, Mingus’ words underscore the impact of having his grandfather’s self-destruction on endless display. There’s honesty in choosing to talk about the bits of bone in the room, a characteristic that marks the confessional nature of his work.

When speaking of the performances of Eric Mingus, there is an inability to categorize. His music does not fit comfortably in any of the individual genres of “spoken word,” “jazz” or “blues.”  Rather, it reinforces the notion that fitting music into categories is really just a way for us to filter in or out what we think we are familiar with. One could make the same argument about identity.

“I was born mixed race in the ’60s, which was a pretty intense period of time, racially, in America. People wanted you to decide whether you were black or white. I remember being a kid and people were like ‘Well, you’re black because your father’s black.’ And I thought of my mom, who loves me and takes care of me and thought, ‘Why should I deny that bloodline?’”

He adds, “People feel better around you when they know what you are.”

Mingus’ own experience suggests what’s lost with this kind of compartmentalization. “Most of the people I worked with were painters, or craftsmen, and they were all poets. They can sing and play and dance, but they can also build and design. I grew up around so many people that had so many facets about them.”

In the end, he says, the same applies to him. “I guess my work is about me not being able to find a way to be one thing.”

Eric will be sharing the stage with notable local and national poets and musicians in his Jazzmouth performance on Saturday. He doesn’t often perform solo spoken word, accompanied by only his double-bass. In addition to the uniqueness of the performance, the event has added significance, Mingus says.

“Poetry was important to my dad. I really am looking forward to this. It serendipitously landed on my dad’s birthday, and I’m pretty happy about that. I thought it would be nice to visit some of my pieces about my dad and maybe look into his music. I don’t do that normally.” 

So, in addition to some blues, some R&B, some jazz, some rock and roll, and some spoken word, audiences can perhaps expect to hear the ghosts of his influences when poet, musician and singer Eric Mingus takes the stage to cap a memorable Jazzmouth on Saturday night.