Podcasts about leroi jones

In Black Music, a collection of essays, liner notes and interviews from 1959 to 1967, Amiri Baraka captures the ferment, energy and excitement of the avant-garde jazz scene. Brent and Adam, both jazz critics, discuss Baraka's intimate connections to major players in the scene, and how his work squarely tackles the challenge of writing about music. Published while he still went by LeRoi Jones, the collection provides a composite picture of Baraka's evolving thought, aesthetic values and literary experimentation. Whether you're familiar with the music or totally new to the New Thing, Black Music is an essential guide to a period of political and artistic upheaval.Non-subscribers will only hear an extract from this episode. To listen to the full episode, and all our other Close Readings series, subscribe:Subscribe to Close Readings:Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps: lrb.me/closereadingsBrent Hayes Edwards is a scholar of African American and Francophone literature and of jazz studies at Columbia University.Get in touch: podcasts@lrb.co.ukFurther reading in the LRB:Adam Shatz: The Freedom Principlehttps://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2014/may/the-freedom-principleAdam Shatz: On Ornette Colemanhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v37/n14/adam-shatz/diaryPhilip Clark: On Cecil Taylorhttps://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/april/cecil-taylor-1929-2018Ian Penman: Birditishttps://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v36/n02/ian-penman/birditis Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers. This essay looks at Amiri Baraka previously known as LeRoi Jones. He was seen as a genuine heir to James Baldwin. A decade younger than Baldwin, Jones/Baraka arrived in Greenwich Village just as the Beat scene was reaching its zenith. He wrote poetry and award-winning off-Broadway plays that dealt with race with the greater fire and frankness the 60s demanded. Then in one public appearance, he cancelled himself with comments about the Jewish young men Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered with James Chaney in Mississippi. The story of a career ruined and a notorious evening that split the liberal coalition in New York, a fracture that continues to this day.

"I really admire how James Baldwin always talks about jazz as a kind of model for his writing style. But music has certainly had a profound influence on the way I see the world, especially in terms of the social world. One of the big problems we have in all sorts of different places around the world is the question of how to coordinate difference. All sorts of people have different modes of living, different cultural rhythms, and different ideas about the future. Jazz is brilliant at a lot of things, but it notably brings together different people and allows them to retain their own sense of time and rhythm while playing together. It's a really profound model of social coordination. Now, of course, it says something particularly pressing about the United States, but I think as a model for how differences go together, jazz is perhaps unparalleled."Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics.www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/brucebwww.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics."I really admire how James Baldwin always talks about jazz as a kind of model for his writing style. But music has certainly had a profound influence on the way I see the world, especially in terms of the social world. One of the big problems we have in all sorts of different places around the world is the question of how to coordinate difference. All sorts of people have different modes of living, different cultural rhythms, and different ideas about the future. Jazz is brilliant at a lot of things, but it notably brings together different people and allows them to retain their own sense of time and rhythm while playing together. It's a really profound model of social coordination. Now, of course, it says something particularly pressing about the United States, but I think as a model for how differences go together, jazz is perhaps unparalleled."www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/brucebwww.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"It's hard to make generalizations about the novel as a form because there are so many different iterations of novel, there are so many great novels. But in general, especially when thinking about the early 20th century, the novel has a certain kind of idea of progressive development built into it. When you read a novel, it's as if you can feel that sharp edge of the end of the novel mentally. You know there's an ending coming, and you don't know exactly what the ending is going to be, but you know that it's going to link everything up and make it all make sense. It trains you to lean toward the future in a certain way. You read an individual event, but you're subconsciously storing it away, knowing that it will be important later. You train yourself while reading a novel to take individual events and link them all to future redemption. But jazz doesn't do that. It has a certain repetition in it. When something interesting happens in the moment, it is enjoyed for itself. It's not necessarily going to be picked up later or incorporated into an overall form. It is just a contingent event that has its own density and beauty to it in the moment."Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics.www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/brucebwww.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics."It's hard to make generalizations about the novel as a form because there are so many different iterations of novel, there are so many great novels. But in general, especially when thinking about the early 20th century, the novel has a certain kind of idea of progressive development built into it. When you read a novel, it's as if you can feel that sharp edge of the end of the novel mentally. You know there's an ending coming, and you don't know exactly what the ending is going to be, but you know that it's going to link everything up and make it all make sense. It trains you to lean toward the future in a certain way. You read an individual event, but you're subconsciously storing it away, knowing that it will be important later. You train yourself while reading a novel to take individual events and link them all to future redemption. But jazz doesn't do that. It has a certain repetition in it. When something interesting happens in the moment, it is enjoyed for itself. It's not necessarily going to be picked up later or incorporated into an overall form. It is just a contingent event that has its own density and beauty to it in the moment."www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/brucebwww.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"The interesting text is Quicksand, right? Because it shows a couple of engagements with jazz, and there's a certain point in which the protagonist of Quicksand dances to music in a cabaret, and it's described as 'jungle music'. So we would think of Duke Ellington's Jungle Music Band of the 1920s, and we would also notice the kind of reactionary, racial ideas that go with labeling something as from the jungle. And so there's a way in which jazz is trying to be America's responding to jazz by containing it, thinking of it as something kind of primitive. But this is something that's codified or themetized in Nella Larsen's novel.The protagonist goes in here, and one, she's like the music drives her with a certain kind of intensity, something like ecstasy that's really unparalleled throughout the rest of the novel. And so it's exciting, and it moves her in a certain way, but she knows that if she becomes part of this 'jungle music', she'll be figured as a certain kind of woman. And so there are all sorts of racial assumptions, including primitivism that work to kind of limit recognition of its sophistication and its brilliance and its importance."Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics.www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/brucebwww.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics."The interesting text is Quicksand, right? Because it shows a couple of engagements with jazz, and there's a certain point in which the protagonist of Quicksand dances to music in a cabaret, and it's described as 'jungle music'. So we would think of Duke Ellington's Jungle Music Band of the 1920s, and we would also notice the kind of reactionary, racial ideas that go with labeling something as from the jungle. And so there's a way in which jazz is trying to be America's responding to jazz by containing it, thinking of it as something kind of primitive. But this is something that's codified or themetized in Nella Larsen's novel.The protagonist goes in here, and one, she's like the music drives her with a certain kind of intensity, something like ecstasy that's really unparalleled throughout the rest of the novel. And so it's exciting, and it moves her in a certain way, but she knows that if she becomes part of this 'jungle music', she'll be figured as a certain kind of woman. And so there are all sorts of racial assumptions, including primitivism that work to kind of limit recognition of its sophistication and its brilliance and its importance."www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/brucebwww.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"When I think about the most amazing things that humans can do, I can't help but think about high level jazz musicians. The amount of information that they're processing—harmonic, melodic, rhythmic information all on the spot—and the act of not only taking it all in and figuring out where they fit in it, but also responding to it and creating something with a certain form and meaningfulness to it is, I think, one of the most impressive things that I've known any human being to do.And that's worth thinking about in terms of human capacities. And it's also, of course, going back to this idea that music is sophisticated as something like what Duke Ellington would create was labeled as 'jungle music' in the twenties. It's a sign of the way race was and continues to be a way in which all sorts of human creativeness and inventiveness and intelligence is under-recognized or dismissed."Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics.www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/brucebwww.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics."When I think about the most amazing things that humans can do, I can't help but think about high level jazz musicians. The amount of information that they're processing—harmonic, melodic, rhythmic information all on the spot—and the act of not only taking it all in and figuring out where they fit in it, but also responding to it and creating something with a certain form and meaningfulness to it is, I think, one of the most impressive things that I've known any human being to do.And that's worth thinking about in terms of human capacities. And it's also, of course, going back to this idea that music is sophisticated as something like what Duke Ellington would create was labeled as 'jungle music' in the twenties. It's a sign of the way race was and continues to be a way in which all sorts of human creativeness and inventiveness and intelligence is under-recognized or dismissed."www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/brucebwww.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"I really admire how James Baldwin always talks about jazz as a kind of model for his writing style. But music has certainly had a profound influence on the way I see the world, especially in terms of the social world. One of the big problems we have in all sorts of different places around the world is the question of how to coordinate difference. All sorts of people have different modes of living, different cultural rhythms, and different ideas about the future. Jazz is brilliant at a lot of things, but it notably brings together different people and allows them to retain their own sense of time and rhythm while playing together. It's a really profound model of social coordination. Now, of course, it says something particularly pressing about the United States, but I think as a model for how differences go together, jazz is perhaps unparalleled."Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics.www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/brucebwww.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"There's all sorts of fantastic things in the music, but if we think about the music as a model for social form or interaction, it lets one get away from fixed assumptions about the present and the future and attunes one to other people.You're not dependent upon, if you follow a jazz model, a fixed conception of progress or a calendar, but rather other people. And other people are flexible—sometimes disappointing, but sometimes surprising in fantastic ways. If you take this model of jazz temporality and coordination, it suggests another way of organizing social life. One that is important and productive in all sorts of different ways."Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics.www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/brucebwww.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Bruce Evan Barnhart is an associate professor of American literature and culture at the University of Oslo and co-director of the project Literature, Rights, and Imagined Communities. He is the author of Jazz in the Time of the Novel: The Temporal Politics of American Race and Culture. His work has appeared in African American Review, Callaloo, and Novel. His latest publications are Temporal Experiments: Seven Ways of Configuring Time in Art and Literature, co-edited with Marit Grøtta, and LeRoi Jones, Jazz, and the Resonance of Class. His research interests include African American literature, post-Marxist theory, jazz, and Caribbean aesthetics."There's all sorts of fantastic things in the music, but if we think about the music as a model for social form or interaction, it lets one get away from fixed assumptions about the present and the future and attunes one to other people.You're not dependent upon, if you follow a jazz model, a fixed conception of progress or a calendar, but rather other people. And other people are flexible—sometimes disappointing, but sometimes surprising in fantastic ways. If you take this model of jazz temporality and coordination, it suggests another way of organizing social life. One that is important and productive in all sorts of different ways."www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/people/aca/brucebwww.routledge.com/Temporal-Experiments-Seven-Ways-of-Configuring-Time-in-Art-and-Literature/Barnhart-Grotta/p/book/9781032350240https://www.hf.uio.no/ilos/english/research/groups/temporal-experiments/www.creativeprocess.info www.oneplanetpodcast.orgIG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Revenons aux sources avec la terreur du Delta Blues, Howlin' Wolf. Cet immense gaillard impose le respect par son vécu à travers l'Amérique ségrégationniste du début du XXe siècle, sans compter une situation familiale déplorable dont il s'arracha avec un courage exemplaire. Wolf avait une force de caractère hors du commun qu'il injecta dans un blues guerrier et revanchard, une musique si puissante et évocatrice qu'elle inspira le monde entier. Durant son parcours hallucinant, Wolf croisa le chemin de toutes les légendes du Mississippi : Charley Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters... Des musiciens au talent surnaturel qui changèrent la donne. Howlin Wolf en fut l'un des emblèmes, un artiste parmi les plus importants de l'histoire de la musique moderne. Publié pour la première fois en octobre 2015. Article disponible sur le site Chicane Magazine : http://www.chicane-magazine.com/2017/03/10/gdvhw/ Quelques références... Des bouquins : "Moanin' at Midnight, The Life and Times of Howlin' Wolf" de James Segrest et Mark Hoffman, chez Tunder's Mouth Press (livre en anglais) "Love in Vain" de Jean Michel Dupont (scénariste) et Mezzo (dessins), chez Gléna. Biographie romancée de Robert Johnson en bande dessinée "Le Peuple du Blues" de LeRoi Jones, chez Folio "Feel Like Going Home" de Peter Guralnick, chez Rivages Rouges. Série de portraits de bluesmen. De la musique : Smokestack Lightning, The Complete Chess Master - Howlin' Wolf (4 CDs, enregistrements de 1951 à 1960) The Rockin' Chair album - Howlin' Wolf (1962) The Backdoor Wolf - Howlin' Wolf (1973) Electric Mud - Muddy Waters (1968) "Screamin' and Cryin'" - Muddy Waters (enregistrements de 1947 à 1953) Complete Recordings - Robert Johnson (2CDs, enregistrements de 1936 à 1938) The Definitive Charley Patton - Charley Patton (Enregistrements de 1929 à 1934) Death Letter - Son House (1965) Harmonica Wizard - Sonny Boy Williamson (enregistrements de 1951 à 1956) Et du gros doc : Martin Scorsese Presente The Blues, une collection de 7 documentaires fantastiques réalisés par Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, Clint Eastwood, Marc Levin, Mike Figgis, Charles Burnett, Richard Pearce et Robert Kenner. Retrouvez la playlist avec tous les morceaux utilisés pour l'épisode ici : https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0jXiFkU2B0J4XXATtGp4k7?si=8cca9590150e4dee facebook twitter Instagram

Černošská literatura byla průměrná, protože většina afroamerických autorů pocházelo ze středních vrstev a chtěli dokázat, že se vyrovnají bílým spisovatelům. Barakovou odpovědí bylo vymanění se z bělošských literárních institucí, přestěhoval se a zabýval se politickou situací. Vlastní jméno LeRoi Jones si změnil na africké Amiri Baraka v roce 1965. Tento akt byl pro něj zápas o identitu, protože většina Afroameričanů získalo svá jména po otrokářích nebo jim bylo přiděleno.

By the Committee on Poetry on 6 January 1968.A Poem A Day by Sudhanva Deshpande.Read on September 15, 2020.Art by Virkein Dhar.Signature tune by M.D. Pallavi.

The artist's role is to raise the consciousness of the people. To make them understand life, the world and themselves more completely. That's how I see it. Otherwise, I don't know why you do it. - Amiri BarakaOne month after Malcolm X's assassination in February 1965, the highly respected writer LeRoi Jones, who would later become known as Amiri Baraka – a man often described as polarizing and controversial - moved from Manhattan's Lower East Side where he had been living and working as a celebrated poet amongst an integrated crowd of artist and innovators, to Harlem. In Harlem, he intended to create a movement that would produce more politically engaged art that would awaken the Black consciousness and help secure Black liberation.This movement, known as the Black Arts Movement, quickly spread to cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Oakland. It galvanized a group of young Black artists who would rise up to challenge the power structures in this country, armed with nothing more than a pen, paper, paint, ideas, and enough words to start a revolution.Often referred to as the spiritual sister of the Black Power Movement, this was art by artists who saw Black people as beautiful, whole, and powerful. These cultural nationalists called for the creation of poetry, books, visual art, and theater that was rooted in Black pride.They gave us language when we didn’t have any and told the truth when we couldn’t.“You may write me down in history with your bitter twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt but still like dust I’ll rise.” - Maya AngelouWhen our hearts were breaking. They spoke for us.“I gather up / each sound / you left behind / and stretch them / on our bed. / each night / I breathe you / and become high.” - Sonia SanchezTheir words are like lamp posts, guiding us back to shore.“Then I awoke and dug, that if I dreamed natural dreams of being a natural woman doing what a woman does when she’s natural, I would have a revolution.” - Nikki GiovanniToday’s call will be a celebration of our heroes, Maya, Sonia, Nikki, Gwendolyn, and June. It will be a tribute to Brother Amiri Baraka, for he had the vision and the courage to say the hard things, the real things, the unpopular things and to do it all for the love of his people.Lace-up. Tune in. You don’t want to miss this.Join the second edition of GirlTrek’s Black History Bootcamp at blackhistorybootcamp.com to receive specially curated emails with inspiring words, survival tips, speeches + dedicated songs to listen to for each episode. Together we will discover the stories and explore the pivotal moments from some of the most powerful movements in Black history.Disclaimer: We do not own the rights to the poems and music played during this broadcast. Original content can be found here:Def Poetry - Amiri Baraka - Why is We Americans:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ziRjhAgTO8&t=3sMaya Angelou - Still I Rise:https://open.spotify.com/track/2bWsGK2sfee5PAJUHbf6YK?si=p3T71SJ2ThWSs-JOQHejfg

This week, Leah (http://leahmarche.com/) and I (https://twitter.com/imogenarate) discuss our respective poems, "blues people" and "Maturation," and the role of pain in the artistic process. Other ways to contact Leah: https://twitter.com/leahmarche https://www.instagram.com/msleahmarche/ Take a listen to also find out about poetry events taking place in the valley during the week of November 25th. Photo of Leah Marché (https://www.facebook.com) by Jenny Gerena (https://www.jennygerena.com/) Additional links to topics we touched on in our discussion: 1. Poetry book by Ed Pavlić inspired by Donny Hathaway’s Life: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/2291758.Winners_Have_Yet_to_Be_Announced 2. The death of Donny Hathaway: https://www.nytimes.com/1979/01/15/archives/donny-hathaway-33-pop-and-blues-singer-dead-in-hotel-plunge-hit.html 3. Blues People by LeRoi Jones: https://www.harpercollins.com/9780688184742/blues-people/ 4. About Robert Leroy Johnson: https://www.robertjohnsonbluesfoundation.org/biography/ #Poetrypodcasts #PoetsandMuses #ImogenArate #LeahMarche #bluespeople #Maturation #MartinLutherKingJuniorSchool #PercyLJulianSchool #MajerlesSportsGrill #LiveattheStudio #poetWisdomSoul #WalterCronkiteSchoolofJournalism #CarlHaydenHighSchool #computerscience #computerprogramming #printjournalism #broadcasting #publicrelations #marketing #RadioPhoenix #TheNash #JazzMeetsPoetry #MichaelPfister #TheAwesomeFoundationPhoenix #BlackPoetVentures #poeticductions #EchoVersesBlackPoetsYesterdayToday #DonnyHathaway #AtlanticRecords #ArethaFranklin #RobertaFlack #WheresTheLove #StevieWonder #LeRoiJones #AmiriBaraka #BluesBlack #TheBlackArtsMovement #grandfatherofpoetry #musicastoolforsurvival #mentalillness #TVOne #Unsung #EdPavlić #AtlasStCloud #RobertLeroyJohnson #GrandfatherofRocknRoll #Crossroads #RalphMacchio #JamesBrown #MichaelJackson #Prince #WhitneyHouston

The Rowan University Football Coaches Show recaps the loss to Montclair State and also takes a look at this week's game against Christopher Newport University. Former NJAC Defensive Player of the Year and Profs star LeRoi Jones stops by the Alumni Corner as well. *NOTE - Shortened show this week due to technical difficulties.

Luckily I got to speak to Bill Duke! Film director and actor Bill Duke was born on February 26, 1943 in Poughkeepsie, New York and is the son of Ethel Douglas Duke and William Duke, Sr. After earning his A.A. degree from Dutchess Community College, Duke became interested in the performing arts while attending Boston University, although he initially enrolled as a pre-med student. He eventually majored in theater there and then went on to earn a M.A. degree in fine arts from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Duke later enrolled in the American Film Institute (AFI). Duke began his career as an actor in New York City theaters like The Public Theater and New Federal Theater, performing in plays such as LeRoi Jones' Slave Ship and Melvin Van Peebles' musical Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death. Duke's first movie role came in 1976 when he portrayed a fierce young Black Muslim revolutionary named “Abdullah Mohammed Akbar” in Car Wash. Duke's television directorial debut came in 1982 when he directed episodes of Knot's Landing, Falcon Crest, and Flamingo Road for Lorimar Productions. Duke's most prominent and critically acclaimed television work, however, has been his direction of teleplays for the PBS series American Playhouse including “The Killing Floor,” “A Raisin in the Sun,” and “The Meeting,” a 90-minute drama that depicted an imaginary meeting between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. During the 1980s, Duke amassed more than 100 television directing credits, including more than 70 episodes of roughly 20 television series such as Miami Vice, Dallas, Crime Story, Cagney and Lacey and Hill Street Blues. Duke directed his first feature film in 1990, a film adaptation of Chester Himes' novel A Rage in Harlem. Duke went on to direct many other films including Deep Cover, Sister Act 2, Hoodlum and Deacons for Defense. In 2004, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Duke to the California Film Commission, which works to enhance the economic climate of the state by keeping film industry jobs in California. Duke also works with non-profit and charity organizations such as Educating Young Minds, an organization that helps inner-city students excel at school and in life. Duke is the recipient of numerous awards including the AFI's Lifetime Achievement Award, the NAACP's Special Award for Outstanding Achievement, SCLC's Drum Major for Justice Film Award and a Cable Ace Award. President Bill Clinton appointed Duke to the National Endowment for the Humanities. You can find Bill Duke on twitter here: https://twitter.com/RealBillDuke?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5EauthorBuy Bill's book here! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GQFXZ7Y/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_NXfQBb5A6369SWhile many film fans may not be familiar with Bill Duke's name, they most certainly recognize his face. Dating back to the 1970s, Duke has appeared in a number of popular films, including Car Wash, American Gigolo, Commando, Predator, and X-Men: The Last Stand. Fewer still might be aware of Duke's extraordinary accomplishments off-screen—as a talented director, producer, entrepreneur, and humanitarian. You can also check my documentary The People of Brixton, on Kwelitv here: https://www.kweli.tv/programs/the-people-of-brixton?autoplay=true Damien Swaby Social Media Links: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/damien_swaby_video_producer/Twitterhttps://twitter.com/DamienSwaby?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5EauthorFacebookhttps://www.facebook.com/Damien-Swaby-213805135363397/?ref=bookmarksBill Duke talking about his last film being shot on an iPhone and directed by Steven Soderbergh, influenced me to make my latest short film on one. You can view it here! https://vimeo.com/348228831

In his poem “Countries want independence, nations want liberation, and the people, the people want revolution”, Amiri Baraka writes: “Revolutionary Unity gained only thru strugglelong sought formust be fought forRevolutionary Unitya fiery beacon in a world made perpetual nightby imperialismThe basis of struggle Unity Revolutionary UnityUnity gained thru struggleThe basis of the party yet to be builtin a land of "instant everythings" (Oct, 1979) On today's programs, we will hear Critical Reflections on the Organic Nature of Africana Sociopolitical Thought and Cultural Resistance: Contributions from Amiri Baraka w/ Tom Porter. This program is a mix of poetry, music, and various interviews with and on Amiri Baraka that focus on exploring the organic nature of and practical application of forms of resistance. The underlining premise of exploration is centered upon asking the simple question: How can culture be used as a platform for critiquing and creating a world beyond struggle? This organic process of thinking and doing is central to Africana sociopolitical thought that informs its resistance. The cornerstone of critical consciousness formation. The program ends with a conversation I had with Tom Porter, who represents the Black Radical Tradition in all of its manifestations. A close friend of Amiri Baraka, Professor Porter is still, today, an important activist intellectual who has contributed his life to fighting for a world beyond struggle. A veteran activist, educator, radio host and jazz critic, Tom Porter has run for political office in Ohio, served as Director of Antioch Graduate program, and runs a jazz music promotion organization. Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people. Enjoy the program! Music and Other things:1. J Dilla—African Rhythms 2. Outkast—Wailin 3. Snippet of the introduction of Leroi Jones by Maulana Karenga at UCLA, April 5 19674. Amiri Baraka—Against Bourgeois Art 5. Vallis Alps—Young6. Hugh Maskela—If There's Anybody Out There 7. The Roots ft. Amiri Baraka—Something in the Way of Things 8. Picture Credit—Tom Porter and Amiri Baraka, circa 2013 (available here: http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=13497 and imixwhatilike.org )

For this episode of The Future Is A Mixtape, Jesse & Matt explore the paranoid dread and narcotic pull of Adam Curtis' most recent documentary of political-noir, HyperNormalisation. In 2 hours and 40 minutes, it charts the globe-hopping travails of terrorists, bankers, politicians and America's digital aristocracy--all of whom use humanity as pawns by promising simple stories to explain complex problems which can't be solved with “perception management” and pastel fairy-tales about “good vs. evil.” Considered by many to be the most talented and remarkable documentarian in Britain, Adam Curtis has weaved suspicion and suspense into a BBC career that stretches from 40 Minutes: Bombay Motel in 1987 (which explores the have and have-nots of the city) to his most recent film HyperNormalisation in 2016 (which explores how an entirely Russian condition has now passed into the wider-world). Curtis' documentary was released less than a month prior to the mind-gagging upset of Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump, and the film increasingly speaks to a disenchanted, rat-fucked future of no-returns. Jesse & Matt will discuss what makes this “dank” film so compelling and deeply-felt, as well as what makes it, almost equally so, such an evasive work of art. Mentioned In This Episode: The Original Trailer for Adam Curtis' HyperNormalisation Vice: Watch Adam Curtis' Short Film,  Living in an Unreal World, Which Is Effectively a Non-Traditional Film Teaser for His Recently Released Documentary Watch Adam Curtis' HyperNormalisation at This Youtube Link (While It Lasts) Adam Curtis' Official Blog on BBC Adam Curtis' Biography on Wikipedia Internet Movie Database (IMDB) on Adam Curtis Radiohead Does Some ‘Cosmic Shit' with Supercollider--A Tribute to LHC NPR: “It's Locals vs. ‘PIBS' at the Sundance Film Festival” Bondage Power Structures: From BDSM and Spanking to Latex and Body Odors The Sun: “Japan's Weird Sex Hotels -- Offering Everything From Prison Cell Bondage to Vibrator Vending Machines” A Satire of Adam Curtis, The Documentarian: The Loving Trap The Hydra-Headed Tropes of Adam Curtis Films: Chris Applegate on Twitter: “Forget ‘HypernorNormalisation,' Here's Adam Curtis Bingo!” Why Is It That Matthew & Jesse Lack Real Whuffie: Tara Hunt's “The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business” About New York's Most Legendary New Wave Band: The Talking Heads James Verini in The New Yorker: “The Talking Heads Song That Explains Talking Heads” Christian Marclay's The Clock at The LACMA Museum An Excerpt from Marclay's Film-Collage, The Clock Wired Magazine: “Film Clips of Clocks Round Out 24-Hour Video” A Youtube Excerpt of BBC News Coverage of Christian Marclay's The Clock Ken Hollings in BBC News: “What Is the Cut-Up Method?” William Burrough's “The Cut Up Method” in Leroi Jones' (Baraka) The Moderns: An Anthology of New Writing in America William Burrough's The Naked Lunch A YouTube Clip of Taking Down the Financial District: The Ending of Fight Club Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club: A Novel Little Known X-Files' Spin-Off Pilot Episode of The Lone Gunmen Eerily Imagined A Plane Crashing Into The World Trade Center A Portrait by Gerard Malanga: “William Burroughs Takes Aim at NY's Twin Towers, from Brooklyn Bridge, 1978” Adam Curtis Documentaries Currently Found on YouTube: Pandora's Box (1992) The Living Dead (1995) Modern Times: The Way of All Flesh (1997) The Mayfair Set (1999) His Finest Achievement & Magnum Opus: The Century of the Self (2002) The Power of Nightmares (2004) The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (2007) All Watched Over By the Machines of Loving Grace (2011) Bitter Lake (2015) HyperNormalisation (2016) Talkhouse: “Tim Heidecker [from Tim & Eric Show] with Adam Curtis” Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine Matthew Snyder's Syllabus & Course Theme for Fall of 2016: “Presidential Material” Jim Rutenberg in The New York Times: “Can the Media Recover From This Election?” Nate Cohn in The New York Times: “What I Got Wrong About Donald Trump” Nate Silver in FiveThirtyEight: “Why FiveThirtyEight Gave Trump A Better Chance Than Almost Anyone Else” People Pretended to Vote for Kennedy in Larger and Larger Numbers After His Assassination: Peter Foster in The Telegraph: “JFK: The Myth That Will Never Die” YouTube Clip of Alex Jones Getting Coffee Thrown onto to Him While in Seattle Fredrick Jameson on the True Nature of Conspiracy Theories in His Famous Work, Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1992):The technology of contemporary society is therefore mesmerizing and fascinating not so much in its own right but because it seems to offer some privileged representational shorthand for grasping a network of power and control even more difficult for our minds and imaginations to grasp: the whole new de-centered global network of the third stage of capital itself. This is a figural process presently best observed in a whole mode of contemporary entertainment literature -- one is tempted to characterize it as "high-tech paranoia" -- in which the circuits and networks of some putative global computer hookup are narratively mobilized by labyrinthine conspiracies of autonomous but deadly interlocking and competing information agencies in a complexity often beyond the capacity of the normal reading mind. Yet conspiracy theory (and its garish narrative manifestations) must be seen as a degraded attempt -- through the figuration of advanced technology -- to think the impossible totality of the contemporary world system. It is in terms of that enormous and threatening, yet only dimly perceivable, other reality of economic and social institutions that, in my opinion, the postmodern sublime can alone be theorized. Perception Management: A Working Definition Adam Curtis' Remarkable Analysis of Neoconservatives and The Taliban in The Power of Nightmares (2004) The BBC Director's Finest Achievement & Magnum Opus: The Century of the Self (2002) Edward Bernays' Propaganda (Published in 1928) Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool (1968; Released on Criterion in 2013) Jaime Weinman in Maclean's: “The Problem With ‘Problematic'” Gore Vidal: A Working Biography James Kirkchick in The Daily Beast: “Why Did Gore Vidal and William Buckley Hate Each Other?” Morgan Neville's Best of Enemies: Gore Vidal vs. William F. Buckley Christopher Hitchens: A Working Biography The Future Is A Mixtape: Episode 004: “TDS: Terminal Dystopia Syndrome” Dave Eggers' Half-Burnt Satire & Confused Omelette: The Circle Strange Horizons: Estrangement and Cognition by Darko Suvin Takayuki Tatsumi in Science Fiction Studies (V:11; PII): “An Interview with Darko Suvin” David Graeber in The Guardian: “Why Is the World Ignoring the Revolutionary Kurds in Syria?” David Graeber on Real Media: “Syria, Anarchism and Visiting Rojava” InfoWar: “David Graeber: From Occupy Wall Street to the Revolution in Rojava” ROAR Magazine: “Murray Bookchin and The Kurdish Resistance” About PissPigGranddad in Rolling Stone: “American Anarchists Join YPG in Syria Fighting ISIS, Islamic State” The New York Magazine: “The DirtBag Left's Man in Syria: PissPigGranddad Is Coming Home from Syria” IMPORTANT CORRECTION: Matt's claim that HyperNormalisation--the term--came from two Russian brothers, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, who were both Science Fiction authors, is DEAD wrong. The term "hypernormalisation" is taken from Alexei Yurchak's 2006 book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. Arkady and Boris Strugatsky: A Working Biography Guy Debord's Society Of The Spectacle (The Original 1967 Book) Guy Debord's Society Of The Spectacle (The 1973 Film on YouTube) Harold Bloom's The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry Mike Davis' “Not a Revolution--Yet” {His Brilliant Multi-Causal Analysis of Why Donald Trump Won the Election} Jodi Dean on Why Facebook Crushes Complexity of Thought: “Communicative Capitalism and the Challenges of the Left” China Mieville in Socialist Review: “Tolkien - Middle Earth Meets Middle England” Thought Catalog: “14 Unexpected Ways Your Relationship With Your Parents Changes As You Get Older” The Atlantic: “12 Ways to Mess Up Your Kids” Tim Lott in the Guardian About Children's Ruthless Engagement with Irony: “Are Sarcasm and Irony Good for Family Life?” George W. Bush Telling Americans to Still Go Shopping with Their Families and Travel to Disneyland Ranker: “11 Ways Dying in Real Life Is Way Different Than Movie Deaths” David Graeber in Baffler: “Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit” Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven & Twelve John A. Farrell in The New York Times: “Nixon's Vietnam Treachery” Peter Baker in The New York Times: “Nixon Tried to Spoil Johnson's Vietnam Peace Talks in ‘68, Notes Show” Brick Underground: “Stop Blaming the Hipsters: Here's How Gentrification Really Happens (And What You Can Do About It)” Matt Le Blanc's Episodes Chris Renaud's Dr. Suess' The Lorax (The Fucking Godawful Movie-Travesty) Dr. Suess' Brilliant Book on Ecology and Capitalism: The Lorax A Historical Guide in How Women's Rights Have Been Used in War as Seen in Katharine Viner's Essay in The Guardian: “Feminism as Imperialism” Zillah Eisenstein in Al Jazeera: “‘Leaning In' in Iraq: Women's Rights and War?” David Cortright in The Nation: “A Hard Look at Iraq Sanctions” Ricky Gervais' Extras: The Complete Series (On DVD) Annie Jacobsen's Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base Salon Magazine: “The Area 51 Truthers Were Right” Christopher Guest's For Your Consideration How Adam Curtis Misunderstands Arab Spring, Occupy and Weirdly Ignores Bernie Sanders in Jonathan Cook's Essay in Counterpunch: “Adam Curtis: Another Manager of Perceptions” The Los Angeles Review of Books: Mike Davis on Occupy Wall Street in His Essay: “No More Bubblegum” Whuffie: A Working Definition Cory Doctorow Excoriates His Naive Idea of Whuffie in His Essay in Locus Magazine: “Wealth Inequality Is Even Worse in Reputation Economies” Dear Adam Curtis: Here's Some Actual, Real-Life Examples of Organizations Offering Alternatives to Our TDS World: The Next System Project Transition Town: United States IE2030 Open Source Ecology Democracy at Work Community Land Trust Network Democratic Socialists of America Corbyn's Labour Party Momentum: A New Kind of Politics The World Transformed Novara Media Marshal Ganz's Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants John Lynch in Business Insider: “The Average American Watches So Much TV It's Almost a Full-Time Job” Kathryn Cramer in The Huffington Post: “Enough With Dystopia: It's Time For Sci-Fi Writers To Start Imagining Better Futures” Jeet Heer in New Republic: “The New Utopians” (an Overview of Kim Stanley Robinson's Works & Other Authors Using SF to Imagine a Better Future) Radiohead's Music Video for “Daydreaming” The New Yorker: “The Science of Daydreams” The Australian: “The Benefits of Lucid Dreaming” Anna Moore in The Guardian Explores Our Twenty-Year Relationship with Prozac: “Eternal Sunshine” Larry O'Connor in The Washington Free Beacon: “Ending the Starbucks ‘Pay-It-Forward' Cult, for America” Mimi Leder's Pay It Forward (Featuring Haley Joel Osment, Helen Hunt and Kevin Spacey) The Economist on BlackRock's Aladdin: “The Monolith and the Markets” Foundational Articles & Interviews With Adam Curtis: The Wire Magazine: “An Interview With Adam Curtis” Vice: “Jon Ronson in Conversation with Adam Curtis” Paste Magazine: “Adam Curtis Knows The Score: A List of Five Films”   Feel Free to Contact Jesse & Matt on the Following Spaces & Places: Email Us: thefutureisamixtape@gmail.com Find Us Via Our Website: The Future Is A Mixtape Or Lollygagging on Social Networks: Facebook Twitter Instagram

AMIRI BARAKACLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO SHOWPoet, writer, teacher, and political activist Amiri Baraka was born Everett LeRoi Jones in 1934 in Newark, New Jersey. He attended Rutgers University and Howard University, spent three years in the U.S. Air Force, and returned to New York City to attend Columbia University and the New School for Social Research. Baraka was well known for his strident social criticism, often writing in an incendiary style that made it difficult for some audiences and critics to respond with objectivity to his works. Throughout most of his career his method in poetry, drama, fiction, and essays was confrontational, calculated to shock and awaken audiences to the political concerns of black Americans. For decades, Baraka was one of the most prominent voices in the world of American literature.Baraka’s own political stance changed several times, thus dividing his oeuvre into periods: as a member of the avant-garde during the 1950s, Baraka—writing as Leroi Jones—was associated with Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac; in the ‘60s, he moved to Harlem and became a Black Nationalist; in the ‘70s, he was involved in third-world liberation movements and identified as a Marxist. More recently, Baraka was accused of anti-Semitism for his poem “Somebody Blew up America,” written in response to the September 11 attacks.Baraka incited controversy throughout his career. He was praised for speaking out against oppression as well as accused of fostering hate. Critical opinion has been sharply divided between those who agree, with Dissent contributor Stanley Kaufman, that Baraka’s race and political moment have created his celebrity, and those who feel that Baraka stands among the most important writers of the twentieth century. In the American Book Review, Arnold Rampersad counted Baraka with Phyllis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison “as one of the eight figures . . . who have significantly affected the course of African-American literary culture.”Baraka did not always identify with radical politics, nor did his writing always court controversy. During the 1950s Baraka lived in Greenwich Village, befriending Beat poets Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, and Gilbert Sorrentino. The white avant-garde—primarily Ginsberg, O’Hara, and leader of the Black Mountain poets Charles Olson—and Baraka believed in poetry as a process of discovery rather than an exercise in fulfilling traditional expectations. Baraka, like the projectivist poets, believed that a poem’s form should follow the shape determined by the poet’s own breath and intensity of feeling. In 1958 Baraka founded Yugen magazine and Totem Press, important forums for new verse. He was married to his co-editor, Hettie Cohen, from 1960 to 1965. His first play, A Good Girl Is Hard to Find, was produced at Sterington House in Montclair, New Jersey, that same year. Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note, Baraka’s first published collection of poems appeared in 1961. M.L. Rosenthal wrote in The New Poets: American and British Poetry since World War II that these poems show Baraka’s “natural gift for quick, vivid imagery and spontaneous humor.” Rosenthal also praised the “sardonic or sensuous or slangily knowledgeable passages” that fill the early poems. While the cadence of blues and many allusions to black culture are found in the poems, the subject of blackness does not predominate. Throughout, rather, the poet shows his integrated, Bohemian social roots. The book’s last line is “You are / as any other sad man here / american.”With the rise of the civil rights movement Baraka’s works took on a more militant tone. His trip to Cuba in 1959 marked an important turning point in his life. His view of his role as a writer, the purpose of art, and the degree to which ethnic awareness deserved to be his subject changed dramatically. In Cuba he met writers and artists from third world countries whose political concerns included the fight against poverty, famine, and oppressive governments. In Home: Social Essays (1966), Baraka explains how he tried to defend himself against their accusations of self-indulgence, and was further challenged by Jaime Shelley, a Mexican poet, who said, “‘In that ugliness you live in, you want to cultivate your soul? Well, we’ve got millions of starving people to feed, and that moves me enough to make poems out of.’” Soon Baraka began to identify with third world writers and to write poems and plays with strong political messages.Dutchman, a play of entrapment in which a white woman and a middle-class black man both express their murderous hatred on a subway, was first performed Off-Broadway in 1964. While other dramatists of the time were wedded to naturalism, Baraka used symbolism and other experimental techniques to enhance the play’s emotional impact. The play established Baraka’s reputation as a playwright and has been often anthologized and performed. It won the Village Voice Obie Award in 1964 and was later made into a film. The plays and poems following Dutchman expressed Baraka’s increasing disappointment with white America and his growing need to separate from it. Critics observed that as Baraka’s poems became more politically intense, they left behind some of the flawless technique of the earlier poems. Richard Howard wrote of The Dead Lecturer (1964) in the Nation: “These are the agonized poems of a man writing to save his skin, or at least to settle in it, and so urgent is their purpose that not one of them can trouble to be perfect.”To make a clean break with the Beat influence, Baraka turned to writing fiction in the mid-1960s, penning The System of Dante’s Hell (1965), a novel, and Tales (1967), a collection of short stories. The stories are “‘fugitive narratives’ that describe the harried flight of an intensely self-conscious Afro-American artist/intellectual from neo-slavery of blinding, neutralizing whiteness, where the area of struggle is basically within the mind,” Robert Elliot Fox wrote in Conscientious Sorcerers: The Black Postmodernist Fiction of LeRoi Jones/Baraka, Ishmael Reed, and Samuel R. Delany.The role of violent action in achieving political change is more prominent in these stories, as is the role of music in black life.In addition to his poems, novels and politically-charged essays, Baraka is a noted writer of music criticism. His classic history Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963) traces black music from slavery to contemporary jazz. Finding indigenous black art forms was important to Baraka in the ‘60s, as he was searching for a more authentic voice for his own poetry. Baraka became known as an articulate jazz critic and a perceptive observer of social change. As Clyde Taylor stated in Amiri Baraka: The Kaleidoscopic Torch, “The connection he nailed down between the many faces of black music, the sociological sets that nurtured them, and their symbolic evolutions through socio-economic changes, in Blues People, is his most durable conception, as well as probably the one most indispensable thing said about black music.” Baraka also published the important studies Black Music (1968) and The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues (1987). Lloyd W. Brown commented in Amiri Baraka that Baraka’s essays on music are flawless: “As historian, musicological analyst, or as a journalist covering a particular performance Baraka always commands attention because of his obvious knowledge of the subject and because of a style that is engaging and persuasive even when the sentiments are questionable and controversial.”After Black Muslim leader Malcolm X was killed in 1965, Baraka moved to Harlem and founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School. The Black Arts Movement helped develop a new aesthetic for black art and Baraka was its primary theorist. Black American artists should follow “black,” not “white” standards of beauty and value, he maintained, and should stop looking to white culture for validation. The black artist’s role, he wrote in Home: Social Essays (1966), is to “aid in the destruction of America as he knows it.” Foremost in this endeavor was the imperative to portray society and its ills faithfully so that the portrayal would move people to take necessary corrective action. He married his second wife, Amina, in 1967. In that same year, Baraka published the poetry collection Black Magic,which chronicles his separation from white culture and values while displaying his mastery of poetic technique. There was no doubt that Baraka’s political concerns superseded his just claims to literary excellence, and critics struggled to respond to the political content of the works. Some felt the best art must be apolitical and dismissed Baraka’s newer work as “a loss to literature.” Kenneth Rexroth wrote inWith Eye and Ear that Baraka “has succumbed to the temptation to become a professional Race Man of the most irresponsible sort. . . . His loss to literature is more serious than any literary casualty of the Second War.” In 1966 Bakara moved back to Newark, New Jersey, and a year later changed his name to the Bantuized Muslim appellation Imamu (“spiritual leader,” later dropped) Ameer (later Amiri, “prince”) Baraka (“blessing”).By the early 1970s Baraka was recognized as an influential African-American writer. Randall noted in Black World that younger black poets Nikki Giovanni and Don L. Lee (later Haki R. Madhubuti) were “learning from LeRoi Jones, a man versed in German philosophy, conscious of literary tradition . . . who uses the structure of Dante’s Divine Comedy in his System of Dante’s Hell and the punctuation, spelling and line divisions of sophisticated contemporary poets.” More importantly, Arnold Rampersad wrote in the American Book Review, “More than any other black poet . . . he taught younger black poets of the generation past how to respond poetically to their lived experience, rather than to depend as artists on embalmed reputations and outmoded rhetorical strategies derived from a culture often substantially different from their own.”After coming to see Black Nationalism as a destructive form of racism, Baraka denounced it in 1974 and became a third world socialist. He produced a number of Marxist poetry collections and plays in the 1970s that reflected his newly adopted political goals. Critics contended that works like the essays collected in Daggers and Javelins (1984) lack the emotional power of the works from his Black Nationalist period. However, Joe Weixlmann, in Amiri Baraka: The Kaleidoscopic Torch, argued against the tendency to categorize the radical Baraka instead of analyze him: “At the very least, dismissing someone with a label does not make for very satisfactory scholarship. Initially, Baraka’s reputation as a writer and thinker derived from a recognition of the talents with which he is so obviously endowed. The subsequent assaults on that reputation have, too frequently, derived from concerns which should be extrinsic to informed criticism.”In more recent years, recognition of Baraka’s impact on late 20th century American culture has resulted in the publication of several anthologies of his literary oeuvre.The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader (1999) presents a thorough overview of the writer’s development, covering the period from 1957 to 1983. The volume presents Baraka’s work from four different periods and emphasizes lesser-known works rather than the author’s most famous writings. Transbluency: The Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones (1961-1995), published in 1995, was hailed by Daniel L. Guillory in Library Journal as “critically important.” And Donna Seaman, writing inBooklist, commended the “lyric boldness of this passionate collection.” Kamau Brathwaite described Baraka’s 2004 collection, Somebody Blew up America & Other Poems, as “one more mark in modern Black radical and revolutionary cultural reconstruction.” The book contains Baraka’s controversial poem of the same name, which he wrote as New Jersey’s poet laureate. After the poem’s publication, public outcry became so great that the governor of New Jersey took action to abolish the position. Baraka sued, though the United States Court of Appeals eventually ruled that state officials were immune from such charges.Baraka’s legacy as a major poet of the second half of the 20th century remains matched by his importance as a cultural and political leader. His influence on younger writers has been significant and widespread, and as a leader of the Black Arts movement of the 1960s Baraka did much to define and support black literature’s mission into the next century. His experimental fiction of the 1960s is considered some of the most significant African-American fiction since that of Jean Toomer. Writers from other ethnic groups have credited Baraka with opening “tightly guarded doors” in the white publishing establishment, noted Maurice Kenney in Amiri Baraka: The Kaleidoscopic Torch, who added: “We’d all still be waiting the invitation from the New Yorker without him. He taught us how to claim it and take it.”Baraka was recognized for his work through a PEN/Faulkner Award, a Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, and the Langston Hughes Award from City College of New York. He was awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Amiri Baraka crossed over on January 9,  2014To visit Amiri Baraka's website CLICK HERE

Dirah tells about the life of one of the lesser known Beat Generation poets, Amiri Baraka who was also known as LeRoi Jones. Did you know that Amiri considers LeRoi's death to be in the 1960s?

During her month in the cast of the Off-Broadway comedy "Love, Loss and What I Wore", Shirley Knight discusses the appeal of the "stool and music stand" style of presentation while pointing out that she had the only continuing narrative among the many interwoven stories. She also explains why she considers her every appearance on stage to be a rehearsal, not a performance; her attraction to the groundbreaking play "Dutchman" by LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka), which she did in Los Angeles and on film; how she shifted from a planned career in music to acting and her trek out west to the Pasadena Playhouse to pursue that new goal; the extraordinary experience of appearing as Irina in "The Three Sisters" in her Broadway debut, with Geraldine Page and Kim Stanley as her siblings under the direction of Lee Strasberg -- and why she chose that role over playing Ophelia to Richard Burton's "Hamlet"; her years working in England, notably in plays by her husband John Hopkins, which she continued to perform upon their return to the U.S.; her memorable role in Robert Patrick's "Kennedy's Children"; what it was like to have Tennessee Williams write a role expressly for her in "A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur"; her affinity for the plays of fellow Kansan William Inge and her role in creating the ongoing Inge Festival; and her affection for the work of Horton Foote, which marked her most recent Broadway appearance, in the Pulitzer-winning "The Young Man from Atlanta". Original air date - April 28, 2010.

During her month in the cast of the Off-Broadway comedy “Love, Loss and What I Wore”, Shirley Knight (1976 Tony Award winner for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for “Kennedy’s Children”) discusses the appeal of the "stool and music stand" style of presentation while pointing out that she had the only continuing narrative among the many interwoven stories. She also explains why she considers her every appearance on stage to be a rehearsal, not a performance; her attraction to the groundbreaking play “Dutchman” by LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka), which she did in Los Angeles and on film; how she shifted from a planned career in music to acting and her trek out west to the Pasadena Playhouse to pursue that new goal; the extraordinary experience of appearing as Irina in “The Three Sisters” in her Broadway debut, with Geraldine Page and Kim Stanley as her siblings under the direction of Lee Strasberg -- and why she chose that role over playing Ophelia to Richard Burton's Hamlet; her years working in England, notably in plays by her husband John Hopkins, which she continued to perform upon their return to the U.S.; her memorable role in Robert Patrick's “Kennedy's Children”; what it was like to have Tennessee Williams write a role expressly for her in “A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur”; her affinity for the plays of fellow Kansan William Inge and her role in creating the ongoing Inge Festival; and her affection for the work of Horton Foote, which marked her most recent Broadway appearance, in the Pulitzer-winning “The Young Man from Atlanta”.

During her month in the cast of the Off-Broadway comedy "Love, Loss and What I Wore", Shirley Knight discusses the appeal of the "stool and music stand" style of presentation while pointing out that she had the only continuing narrative among the many interwoven stories. She also explains why she considers her every appearance on stage to be a rehearsal, not a performance; her attraction to the groundbreaking play "Dutchman" by LeRoi Jones (now Amiri Baraka), which she did in Los Angeles and on film; how she shifted from a planned career in music to acting and her trek out west to the Pasadena Playhouse to pursue that new goal; the extraordinary experience of appearing as Irina in "The Three Sisters" in her Broadway debut, with Geraldine Page and Kim Stanley as her siblings under the direction of Lee Strasberg -- and why she chose that role over playing Ophelia to Richard Burton's "Hamlet"; her years working in England, notably in plays by her husband John Hopkins, which she continued to perform upon their return to the U.S.; her memorable role in Robert Patrick's "Kennedy's Children"; what it was like to have Tennessee Williams write a role expressly for her in "A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur"; her affinity for the plays of fellow Kansan William Inge and her role in creating the ongoing Inge Festival; and her affection for the work of Horton Foote, which marked her most recent Broadway appearance, in the Pulitzer-winning "The Young Man from Atlanta". Original air date - April 28, 2010.