Haitian Fight Song

I thought this tune would be appropriate for today, as we are about to hear from our racist in chief talk about the state of our "union". Remember, Haiti is one of the shithole countries that he does not want immigrants from, so I thought I'd pick this little Mingus tune out to represent them. Plus, I felt like playing a little Mingus anyway. The main bass riff is one of my all time favorites, and they way he played that upright... Goosebumps all the way. The man was a musical genius who suffered from ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), which is such a cruel disease, gradually robbing him of his ability to play the bass. But we do have the recordings, and Haitian Fight Song, which originally appeared on the album The Clown, recorded in 1957 and released in 1961, is one of his finest.

When talking about it, Mingus told Nat Hentoff, who wrote liner notes to the album, "I'd say this song has a contemporary folk feeling. My solo in it is a deeply concentrated one. I can't play it right unless I'm thinking about prejudice and hate and persecution, and how unfair it is. There's sadness and cries in it, but also determination. And it usually ends with my feeling: 'I told them! I hope somebody heard me." (http://aln2.albumlinernotes.com/The_Clown.html) And what a solo it is... And what a song...