Indeed, there is a considerable rift between approaching a historical subject from either the perspective of an oral tradition of history or according to a more standard practice that privileges documentary evidence and historical fact over narrative, anecdote, and experience. Of course, there are reasons why one sort of history is often preferred over the other, and in the academy and other intellectual circles, the evidentiary tradition of history is generally preferred. Part of the reason for this is its ability to offer empirical verifiable truths that aren't subject to flawed recollection or narrative embellishment.
             Historical findings that are based on evidence and other sorts of factual information give us a
             the historical picture that, if incomplete, is, at least, relatively indisputable, and those moments of dispute can be arbitrated by the strength of other evidentiary claims. Nonetheless, although this process might offer empirical truths, there are some things it can't tell us the sort of character of a man. So when you're looking at a great musician like Charles Mingus, an evidentiary approach to the truth will only tell us so much. Indeed, we have his music on record, which tell us perhaps as much
             as we need to know about that, but what about the man behind it' Using Oral history as a method of collecting anecdotes, stories, and insights provide an excellent way for us to get a deeper insight into the true character and personality of a historical personage, such as Charles Mingus. Indeed, we
             get a deeper understanding of what he was like and how he acted.
             In oral history, it doesn't really matter whether or not the stories contradict each other in certain cases, because oral history is not about the established empirical fact "it is about gaining a greater insight into the character and the personality of someone, and it allows us to have an experiential and
             emotional reaction to the personage in question...