Music is a lived, performative medium that cannot be fully encompassed in the description. Even when an individual piece of music is rendered into print in an effective and moving fashion, it still changes
             the nature of the music itself into something different, namely into a
             piece of prose that is a crafted example of the written art, rather than a
             work of music that is a moving and vibrant work of sound.
             One of the greatest jazz musicians of recent date is that of Charles
             Mingus. His work and his life cry out for a biography of his contribution
             to the musical medium and of his life as a performer. How to render the
             the genius of the man in such a way that his personality and his contribution
             to musical history can be understood' Perhaps the best, albeit imperfect
             way, turn to print only as a way of fleshing out the concrete details of
             Mingus' contribution to jazz after spending one's life loving his music.
             In the absence of this, seeing the man on film through a documentary such
             as "Charles Mingus: The Triumph of the Underdog" offers another
             opportunity for a music historian to see the man and listen to the tunes
             But how to contextually render that life in history' The text of
             Central Avenue Sounds offers perhaps the best literary compromiseâ€"; it is a
             prose work, but one that offers an oral history of jazz. Through
             weaving in the voices of different musicians, and different perspectives of
             the musicians of the Los Angels music scene' the book hopes to offer a
             fully-fleshed internal and external history of these artists.
             Charles Mingus was a critical influence upon many of these artists and was influenced by those who preceded him. But the book is not only a
             triumph, to borrow the documentary's title, of prose. It is also a triumph
             of the medium recorded oral history. It makes a powerful argument for the centrality of Mingus in jazz and the need to use prose to
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