Author and jazz scholar Krin Gabbard's new book,
Better Git It in Your Soul, is an interpretive biography on the music, life and complex racial identity of bassist Charles Mingus.
Mingus, one of jazz’s greatest innovators, was also responsible for shaping his own image as a wild man with his autobiography
Beneath the Underdog, first published in 1971. In his book, Gabbard avoids myth-making and, after exploring some of the artist's most important events, he digs into why Mingus chose to do so much self-analysis, how he worked to craft his racial identity and how his mental and physical problems shaped his career.
Gabbard's previous books include
Hotter than That: The Trumpet, Jazz and American Culture and
Jammin' at the Margins: Jazz and the American Cinema.
Better Git it in Your Soul was published in February by University of Columbia Press.
For more information, go to
http://kringabbard.com/
