Charles Mingus - ‘Fables Of Faubus’

There is, as the old saying doesn’t quite go, more than one way to skin a fascist. And Charles Mingus knew that. While furious anger would have been an entirely appropriate response to Governor Orval Faubus’s decision to use the state guard to prevent African American children from attending Little Rock Central High School, Arkansas in 1957, Mingus managed to create a brilliant and unique protest song by rising above that impulse. Let’s remember the context: this was a dispute which had involved grown adults spitting in children’s faces, potential students being attacked with acid and the attempted burning of one child. How do you adequately respond to acts of such grotesque extremity? Maybe the only way is to take the piss. ‘Fables Of Faubus’ doesn’t sound militant. - instead, its lurching lope, pitched somewhere between bebop and a particularly lugubrious New Orleans second line sounds mocking, insolent, as close to sarcastic as music can get. It basically refuses to take Faubus seriously; treats him like the clown he so evidently is. And in the end, isn’t that the best possible response to someone trying to impose their insane and offensive vision onto you? Mingus doesn’t cuss Orval Faubus out - he simply makes some music that sounds like a fantastic party to which Faubus couldn’t possibly be invited.
Phil Harrison