Amiri BarakaBesprekingen

Memory: discovering from an inscription in a chapbook that your sister once met Amiri Baraka.

Excellent book on blues AND jazz by a brilliant writer. It wasn't quite the book I was expecting -- since I've read other books by Jones (Baraka) I was expecting more fiery rhetoric than is here. That said, this is a book that is as much about how the music(s) is/are based in African-American *experience* as it is about the music itself. You might find yourself puzzled (I was, initially) by the fact that many of your favorite artists -- if you are a blues fan -- are not here: there's no mention of Robert Johnson, or Charley Patton, or Skip James. I am guessing this may be because the book somewhat (though not entirely) predated the real explosion of interest in country blues that occupied the rest of the 1960s (Baraka cites books by Sam Charters and Paul Oliver that *do* mention some of these people, however).

The subtitle, "Negro Music in White America" really should give you a good idea of what this book focuses on -- music as an expression of, and outgrowth of, black experience. I look forward to reading *Black Music* which is a followup or companion to this volume.

To understand that you are black in a society where black is an extreme liability is one thing, but to understand that it is the society that is lacking and is impossibly deformed because of this lack, and not yourself, isolates you even more from that society. Fools or crazy men are easier to walk away from than people who are merely mistaken.

Blues People was published in 1963, when Jones (aka Amiri Baraka) was early in his career as a literary provocateur, the modern civil rights movement was soon to come to a head, and the New Thing in jazz was growing horns and wings in NYC. From an historical/sociological perspective, Jones argues that the music of African-Americans reflected the changes in the nature of their relationship with America. The phrase “blues people” comes from Ralph Ellison, who defined it as “those who accepted and lived close to their folk experience.” The phrase obtains a sharper critical thrust in Jones’ hands.

In Jones’ telling, black people in the U.S. have passed through a series of conditions—captive, slave, freeman, citizen—and their experience at each stage shaped the music that they made. Captured Africans were forced into an alien world where none of the familiar cultural references were available; their contact with Western slavery was strange and unnatural. The African came to realize that all the things he thought important were thought by the white man to be primitive nonsense, including his music, which contrasted with Western music in function and rhythm. Western musical concepts of ‘beauty’ and ‘regularity’ did not pertain to African music, which instead emphasizes rhythmic syncopation, polyphony & creative paraphrasing. ‘African culture was suppressed by constant contact with Euro-American culture and obscured by rapid (forced) acculturation,’ though the nonmaterial aspects of African culture were difficult to eradicate. Field hollers and work songs retained key elements of African music, even as the function of the music shifted. The spread of Christianity among slaves moved them further from Africa and traditional religious beliefs and practices, writes Jones, though their African heritage provided much of the emotional content to black Christianity.

Nothing too contentious so far. But Jones argues that the increasing prominence of the black church led to the development of a new theocracy and social mores which in turn enforced a new hierarchy. Blacks highest in the social and economic hierarchy (church elders and officers) emulated whites, and social stations among blacks began to mirror the structure of white society. The disdain that ‘high station’ blacks had for the lower class effectively signaled their acceptance of white superiority, writes Jones, and the new distinctions among blacks was reflected in black music: church spirituals (imitations of white hymns) were more melodic and musical than the field hollers, and the fiddle music and jig tunes of ‘the folk’ were judged as sinful. The legal end of slavery presented to the ‘negro masses’ a chance at a fuller life outside the church, though, with more opportunities for backsliding and indulging in ‘the devil’s music.’

Freemen entered a complicated situation of self-reliance and thus faced a multitude of social and cultural problems that they never had to deal with as slaves, and the music of blacks in the U.S. began to change to reflect these social and cultural complexities. Blues music developed because of the freeman’s adaptation to and adoption of America, says Jones, but was also a music that developed because of the freeman’s peculiar position in this county. Jones contrasts ‘primitive’ blues—developed as a music to be sung for pleasure, a casual music, folkloric—and ‘classical’ blues—which contained all the diverse and conflicting elements of black music plus the smoother emotional appeal of the performance. Classic blues became concerned with situations and ideas that were less precise, less obscure to white America, and the professionalism and broader meaning of classical blues made it a kind of stylized response, moving it in a way out of the lives of ‘the folk.’

The movement toward performance turned some of the emotional climate of the freeman’s life into artifact and entertainment.

When we get to the 20th c., with the advent of jazz, the Great Migration and the broadening experience of American blacks, Blues People becomes a critical tour de force. Jazz, as instrumental blues music with European instruments, illustrated another of the shifts in blacks’ relationship to America. The isolation that had nurtured the African-American musical tradition before the coming of jazz had largely disappeared by the mid-1920s, and many ‘foreign’ elements drifted into this broader instrumental music. A generation of educated black musicians in the 1920s and 30s (“for whom the blues was less direct,” says Jones) showed that jazz could absorb new elements and evolve without losing its identity. Sounds from the ‘hot’ brass bands of Louis Armstrong to the blues and stomp arranged for large bands (with Fletcher Henderson as the crucial figure) made black dance bands into a national phenomenon by the 1930s. Big dance-band jazz was played by black ‘citizens’, educated professionals who thought of themselves as performers (Duke Ellington, who “perfected big-band jazz and replaced a spontaneous collective music by a worked-out orchestral language,” earns only a kind of grudging respect from Jones). With jazz, writes Jones, black music became less secret and separate: acknowledgement by serious white musicians like Bix Beiderbecke and Nick LaRocca served to place black culture and society in a position of intelligent regard it had never enjoyed before. The emergence of the white jazz player meant that African-American culture had already become the reflection of a particular kind of American experience, and this experience was available intellectually; it could be learned. Black music did not become a completely American expression, then, until the white man could play it.

The migration of blacks out of the American South in the early 20th c. ‘erased one essential uniformity, the provinciality of place, the geographical and social constant,’ and henceforth there were to be such concepts as the ‘Northern Negro’ and ‘Southern Negro,’ country and city black, and a range of possible psychological and sociological reactions to life in the U.S. This movement into America stimulated the growth of a black middle class, writes Jones—a class ‘distinguished not only by an economic condition but by a way of looking at the society in which it exists.’ The black middle class formed around the proposition that it is better not to be black in a country where being black is a liability. (Jones sees a harbinger of middle-class black attitudes among the house servants and church officials of an earlier period and the ‘uptown’ Creoles of fin de siècle New Orleans). The black middle class believed that the best way to survive would be ‘to deny that there had ever been an Africa or a slavery or even a black man,’ and that the only way to be a citizen was ‘to disavow that he or his part of the culture had ever been anything but American.’

Again, black music came to reflect the conflicted relationship of blacks to life in America. City life revitalized the blues ‘with a kind of frenzy and extra-local vulgarity’ that had not been present before (ref. Kansas City as a regional center of the ‘shouting blues,’ Count Basie, Jay McShann, et. al.). Writes Jones, ‘it was almost as if the blues people were reacting against the softness and legitimacy that had crept into black instrumental music’ after whites got their hands on it. The black cultural consciousness stimulated by the war years and the emergence of rhythm & blues music were anathema to the black middle class—R&B because ‘it was contemporary and existed as a legitimate expression of a great many blacks, and as a gaudy reminder of the real origins of Negro music.’

The most original and interesting part of Blues People is Jones’ interpretation of the emergence of bebop in light of the discussion hitherto. He presents the music as a kind of deliberate project by young musicians to develop a form of individual expression that could not be diluted (or even necessarily understood) by the mainstream of American culture. According to Jones, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie all said at one time or another that they did not care if anyone listened to their music. (It’s easy to imagine them in 1942, afterhours at Minton’s, playing for themselves). The music derived from an attitude that distanced itself from ‘the protective and parochial atmosphere of the folk expression’ but also ‘put on a more intellectually and psychologically satisfying level the traditional separation and isolation of the black man from America.’

Ultimately, the form and content of Negro music in the 40s re-created, or reinforced, the social and historical alienation of the Negro in America, but in the Negro’s terms.

A bold polemic, necessary for its time, Blues People is one of the great American books.

This volume contains four essays making the case for reparations. Although written with the United States in mind, the topic is broadly applicable in the Caribbean as well. Published by St. Martin's House of Nehesi Publishers, with an introduction by Fabian Badejo.

My first time reading Baraka. Where the Dutchman has a mounting tension the Slave is an all out bombardment. I'm still sorting through so much of what he engaged in both. I was particularly impressed with the way he engaged the somatic experience, the body.

**************** FAIR WARNING *******************
This review contains excepts on poems that contain profanity and racial subject matter.

*************************************************

SOS: Poems 1961-2013 by Amiri Baraka is a collection of poetry spanning the author’s lifetime and reflecting his views particularly on racism. Baraka was a novelist, playwright, and a revolutionary African American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of New Jersey surrounded by controversy. Baraka refused to step down, and, with no way to remove him from the position, the position was abolished by the state legislature and governor.

I grew up in a very segregated city of Cleveland, Ohio in the 1960s and 1970s. It was not just a black and white segregation, but like most big northern cities even whites segregated themselves into neighborhoods by European heritage. I saw SOS as a way to try and learn what I was sheltered from growing up from a first hand source. I know there are histories written by both black and white authors, but I was hoping that the poetry would speak more to the personal feel than a socially acceptable history. Race in America is charged subject and perhaps a poet can capture it in a way we all can understand.

How amazed the crazed negro looked informed that Animal
Rights had a bigger budget
than the naacp!
~ The Heir of the Dog

SOS opens with a detailed introduction by Paul Vangelisti which is extremely helpful and informative. This is a difficult collection. I found myself struggling for the first half of the collection until the poetry moved into the late 1960s and early 1970s. My personal recollection of the time period helped me gain some traction. There is a reference to Rimbaud early on, but little else for me to relate to. Then suddenly there is Nixon, Kissinger, and Ford and a connection is made. Baraka is angry.

Dude asked Monk if he was interested
in digging
The Mother Land

Monk say,
“I was in the
Motherfuckin

Mother Land before
& some mother fucka
brought me over here

to play the
mother fuckin
piano….

You dig?
~Four Cats on Repatriationology


Baraka criticizes politics,economics,and the arts. He speaks with a frank and direct language.

The whimpering pigment of a decadent economy, slashed into
life
as Yeats’ mad girl plummeting over the nut house wall, her
broken knee caps rattling in the weather, reminding us of lands
our antennae do not reach.
~ The Politics of Rich Painters

He is equally critical and displays anger at all races in a reverse racism of Black Art. Black Art contains a violence of its own and a violence of poetry:

We want “poems that kill.”
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland. Knockoff poems for
dope selling wops or slick halfwhite politicians.

Baraka leaves no stone unturned in his rage politics, class, and religion :

We’ll worship Jesus
When jesus do
Somethin
When jesus blow up
the white house
or blast nixon down
when jesus turnout congress or bust general motors to
yard bird motors
....
jesus need to be busted
we ain’t gonna worship nobody
but niggers gettin up off
the ground.


Not all is anger. Baraka like his music AM/TRAK speaks of Trane in a sharp play on trains and Coltrane. There is also a play on an angry Sisyphus who hates rock and roll because the gods who punished him created a band called The Rolling Stones, just to rub it in. If Elvis Presley was the king, then who is James Brown, God? The Beatles are not seen quite as favorably in Baraka eyes.


Baraka has sharp words and makes no attempt to hide his personal feelings. This is a rough collection of poems that resides outside polite society. It is for people, not just black, who see the construct of American culture and politics and realize it is not the clean and sanitary image that we are trained to see. The change we think we see is not always there:

Revolutionary War gamed
sold
out

The Tories still in control
of the culture
~There was Something I Wanted to Tell You

Personally, I think this is one of Baraka's very best works, though not his poetry for which he is best known. Excellent piece and relevant to its time and still so today. Recommended.

To read these tales simply ease into them as you would sink into a surrealistic painting--enjoy them--and let them happen to you. Don't worry about following anything--just experience these tales and let go. "We build our emotions into blank invisible structures which never exist." Love it!

I received a free copy of this book from LibraryThing. Thank you.

A peça Dutchman parte de uma premissa interessante, com um negro, Clay e uma branca, Lula, dentro do metrô. Eles flertam um com o outro, mas Lula age de modo muito estranho. Ri, tira sarro de Clay, parece volátil e leviana. Finge que sabe muita coisa sobre Clay e fala de sua vida e de sua família. Brinca com ele sobre o que farão juntos, não para de comer maçãs, chama-o várias vezes de mentiroso e finalmente diz-lhe que é um assassino. Clay acaba aborrecendo-se e começa a gritar, falando do comportamento lunático de Lula. Persegue-a. Ela foge e, quando o vagão do trem escurece, apunhala e mata Clay. Mais tarde, vemo-la noutro metrô com outro negro e sabemos que ela vai fazer o mesmo, novamente! Francamente, a peça é terrível (e não no bom sentido) porque o diálogo se arrasta sem nenhum propósito aparente. Não se tem ideia do que acontece até o final. Às vezes, adiar o entendimento do enredo até o final funciona, mas aqui só entedia. Jones não traz qualquer mensagem de tipo relativo a relações raciais e, se é que a traz, somente no final da peça é que a gente se liga nisso.½

Angry, experimental prose by an influential twentieth-century African American.

Amiri Baraka (1934-2004) was a leading voice in defining African American literature. He was a poet, a novelist, a music critic, and university teacher who exhorted blacks to create their own artistic forms rather than imitate those of whites. He and his political writing has been widely praised and attacked. In the 1960s, he gave up his birth name, LeRoy Jones, and took a leading role in the more militant movements of the time rather than in the non-violent civil rights movement. His later work lays bare black hatred and violence. The System of Dante’s Hell, written at this time, is meant to convey the depths of pain and isolation in urban ghettos. Written largely in prose, the book is highly complex, impressionistic, and non-linear.

While I recognize Baraka’s power and wanted to read his work, I lacked the skill to decipher his words. His anger and contempt were evident, but I needed more structure. I applaud Akashic Books for republishing this important book and recommend it to more cosmopolitan readers than myself.

Thanks to Akashic Books for a review copy of this book.

Amiri Baraka is a poet and when he tries to write prose, he sounds like the mad prophet of poetry that he is. Some of the stories in this slim collection were difficult to follow, heavy on the stream of consciousness, rambling, defiant. The wordplay was excellent, but I much prefer Mr. Baraka's poetry. It's a nice book to have if you're a fan of Baraka's talents, he has a nice ear for the streets and this adds another nice title to the growing beat poet, bebop jazz lyricists' bibliography.

I knew Amiri Baraka was known for angry, unapologetic poetry. I knew he was the poet laureate of NJ before people flipped out and the post was eliminated in order to remove him from being the poet laureate. I'd read a handful of his poems over the years, so I had some preconceived notions.

I hadn't read his short stories though and I'm not sure if it's because they were short stories - some bordering on a stream of conscious writing - that I didn't get what I expected. The mastery of the language was there, social consciousness and commentary and controversial phrasing and statements were sprinkled throughout, but the anger so obvious in his poetry wasn't really there. I think in the mid-'60s these stories probably hit like a bombshell in a fractured society, but compared to some statements in art and activism seen today, they seemed a little tame. It wasn't until the very last story, which started with a poem, that they ramped up to fury I expected. It was a worthwhile read for the historical value - getting an idea of where some of one of the most famous protest writers in America and the art was still inn abundance.½

I will echo some other reviewers here and say that this book simply wasn't for me. Baraka was clearly a very talented man, but this collection was too disjointed and abstract for me. I liked the narratives that were less cryptic and obtuse, but they were few and far between. Even in the more abstract narratives there were consistent glimmers of wonderful poetry, but as a whole, this book was a miss for me. Still, I will follow up and read more of his poetry to see what I think of his other work.

This book wasn't for me. It is a collection of stories written in a cryptic black voice. The disjointed style got in the way for me, and required more effort and second readings than I wanted to put forth for the stories. The few stories that stuck out were those in which I could tell what was going on. The last story, Answers in Progress, was probably my favorite, centered around some benevolent alien invaders who love jazz music. My second favorite was probably the one in which Baraka describes himself wanting to be an intellectual and burying himself in books.½

This re-issue of Tales by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) is ideally suited for (and will hopefully be used in) literature courses as well as Black Studies/African-American Studies courses. Originally published in 1967 this collection captures an important transitional period in Baraka's writing. While he had always addressed the issue of being Black in America he was moving from doing so in a traditional voice, often considered a non-threatening voice to a largely white academic and literary audience. As he developed a voice that was not only more his own but also better able to speak to other Blacks he became perceived as far more threatening.

The tales here are not light breezy reads, but neither are indecipherable. They do require an intention to understand what they may be saying or implying. As is well known and probably doesn't require repeating, his voice became infused with a jazz/rhythm & blues flow. Like good poetry (and he was a very good poet) the ears are an important element in understanding and appreciating his stories. These do reward the reader for an oral enactment of the tales. I do think that these tales are more effective because they are not so simple. When we are forced to slow our reading and think about what we read it helps us to test different perspectives and possibilities, which can only serve to enrich any reading.

In addition to students (whether formal or informal) of literature, the Black Arts Movement and the intersections of literature, music, culture and politics I think this would also benefit writers who might want to experience different ways of infusing their writing with movement, meaning and rhythm. While I consider this a 5 star classic I am giving it 4 (4.5) stars because many readers will find these to be too far removed from a standard short story with a very clear progression. Additionally, I think an interested reader should try to read (or re-read) more of Baraka's work to better contextualize this work.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via LibraryThing.½

The System of Dante's Hell is a brilliant prose poem structured on the themes of Dante's Inferno exposing the pain and violence of early 60's Newark slums, a southern youth and the beat precincts of New York's Greenwich Village. Baraka's language sings and his denouement pierces — there is very little middle ground. It is a work of it's time — free-form jazz, abstract art and beat cadence flow through this short but dense autobiographical novel.

I'd read Dante's "The Inferno" (in English) a couple of times and was very much looking forward to reading this book. Baraka wrote it in 1963 when he was still LeRoi Jones; Woodie King Jr., producer and director of the writer's plays points out in his introduction this was a time when "America had not yet witnessed the Watts Riots, Malcolm had not been assassinated, the the Black Arts Movement was not in ascendance..."

Though I'd heard of Baraka's last play, "The Most Dangerous Man in America," about WEB DuBois, I haven't seen it, nor did I know the writer's name — unfortunately a big gap in my education.

Knowing that this experimental work had for its writer an intense connection with Dante's gave me a place to start. The language and imagery of "The System of Dante's Hell" are powerful and vivid, and forcefully push forward even an uninformed reader. It is both poetry and novel, free-form, yet it corresponds with the structure of Hell in Dante's work.

There is freedom, however, and there is freedom. Baraka’s form of writing can be called free in that it is not in accordance with any classically European poetic form like that with which Dante wrote. Even without such a rigorous set of rules to constrain his expression, however, his words and meaning are imbued with imprisonment, the imprisonment of his life.

Dante used a constraining form of writing to express imprisonment in the tortures of Hell for eternity as the consequences of choices made in life. Baraka, whose time, place and conventions of writing are different, makes what choices he can. Terrifyingly, for a black person in America, those choices are made in a life that is already Hell.

I have to confess that there is a lot that I don’t understand in this book. If I have misread it, please forgive me; know that I am moved and impressed by what I have read, and no disrespect is intended.

Amiri Baraka's The System of Dante's Hell is a brilliant little book I am grateful to have discovered. I had previously read Baraka's criticism (e.g. Blues People, published under the name LeRoi Jones) and was generally familiar with his reputation as a poet. To my knowledge, this is Baraka's only novel (originally published ca. 1965) and one of only two of this prolific writer's published works in the fiction category.

The newly published small paperback volume of just 160 pages belies the depth of the novel's thematic content as well as the complexity of its form. Baraka riffs on the structure of hell originally set forth by Dante to outline his perspective on humanity's faults, which is set forth in an unorthodox, stream-of-consciousness style. In addition to a pretty fascinating formal presentation, Baraka's work features ideas that command the reader's attention due to their particular boldness and poignancy.

I highly recommend this work to prior readers of Baraka, those interested in exploring his work's particular political and social themes (at this time in his career or generally), as well as to any lover of bold ideas in brilliant literary form. Baraka's prose always punches through to strike the audience with his meaning, as it were, and yet it also rewards close scrutiny of its textual nuances by readers so inclined.

Thank you for reading my thoughts. I hope they can be useful as you evaluate this prospective read.

Note: It was my great good fortune to win a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review through the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.

Amiri Baraka was a prominent African American poet of the 60s and Tales is a reprint collection of some of his short stories. I wish I could say I loved the collection, but I didn't really. Perhaps I didn't enjoy it so much because he is a "lyrical prophet of despair" as it even says on the cover. Despair isn't my favorite mode. I think it is really a matter of "I guess ya had to be there." I feel I'm missing cultural references that would at a sparkling "a ha" reaction to the stories. I do know the cultural references for the last two stories, Jazz-Afrofuturist stories, and I reacted exactly that way. I know this story!!! Ha! Like I was in on an inside joke. "The Alternative" particularly reminds me of Delaney's Dhalgren which is definitely some sort of quintessential 1960s. I particularly enjoyed the irony of "Going Down Slow." So, the long and the short of it, this collection isn't for everyone but if you have a particular interest in Baraka or the 1960s are into despair, this one is for you.½

Amiri Baraka is probably best know for his "inside job" conspiracies about 911. A vicious anti-semite, he blamed the Jews and George Bush for the attacks on 911 and also was pro-rape in his early days. Calling for the rape of white women as a political statement. I am capable of separating politics and art, but some people cannot.

Once you get past his revolting worldview, his writing reminds one of Burroughs although with a little more jazz to it. I was over beat writing once I discovered other literary writers, so this kind of felt like revisiting old hat. This novel should appeal to college students and poetry lovers, both of which I am not. It is in fact a novel comprised of the hell in his head, yet reads like what would have been cutting edge poetry in his time.

It annoys me when black intellectuals get a pass on anti-semitism and talk about harming whites. I carried this into the book, so perhaps someone more naive then myself would have been a better judge of the writing,

I received a free copy of this book, and am grateful. This collection of stories was first published in 1967, nearly 50 years ago. They were all (or nearly all) written before LeRoi Jones changed his name to Amiri Baraka, while he was still working out his identity as a black artist. Many of these stories I found nearly incomprehensible, as they are written in a Joycean stream-of-conciousness style. I also had trouble telling when Jones is writing with a character's voice distinct from his own, versus using the character as a mouthpiece to say exactly what Jones thinks. Related to that, I've found it hard to distinguish facetious humor from extreme views meant to be taken completely seriously. A couple stories that I did understand, and liked, included 'Heroes Are Gang Leaders', and a Black Power science fiction fantasy, 'Answers in Progress.' But for most of the stories, a good critical guide - not part of this edition - could go a long way to making them more accessible. One final note: the casual anti-gay bigotry throughout the stories is annoying. It says a lot about the way living as the target of racism can mess with a man's identity, prompting him to double down on rigid tropes of (straight) masculinity. But in these stories, it feels baked into Jones' worldview, rather than present as an artistic choice, and it's wearing.

So ... yeah. When I was in undergraduate school, my mentor (who, for what it is worth, was a black woman) described a frightening encounter she had had with Baraka (at the Cleveland Playhouse, perhaps -- I can't remember). I recall her describing a large entourage and machine guns, etc etc. She used to say (I paraphrase) "the stuff he wrote when he was still Leroi Jones was awesome, brilliant, surrealist ... then he changed his name and started doing all this 'Kill Whitey' crap."

Even then, I thought .... hmmm.

I thank Akashic Press for the book, and in a much larger sense for re-issuing so many great items from Baraka's catalogue. The book under consideration is material from the early to mid 60s (it was first published in 1967), and it is hot stuff. Some of these tales have recognizable -- at least with a little effort -- plots, and all of it is very much the prose of a poet.

It's also the prose of someone who is very connected to music, almost painfully connected, and to blues/jazz in particular. This work has a rhythm and a sway that could only come from having spent countless hours in smoky clubs listening to jazz and beating on the table with flat hands. It reminded me somehow of Kerouac's Dr. Sax -- and in particular, of watching/listening to Kerouac read excerpts from Dr. Sax with Steve Allen at the piano. Of course, this sometimes-abstract prose comes from the hands of a black genius in the 1960s, hands growing more and more angry as time goes on.

The production is tres classy -- the cover has a nice feel and sports a Carl Van Vechten photo of Baraka. Also, I must say that Akashic has apparently done the right thing and hired a live breathing copy editor/proofreader ... something that even huge presses don't seem to be bothering with these days. Bravo!

You may know of some of the controversies that swirled around Baraka. I urge you to lay preconceptions aside and pick up this small but very full book. If you are offended, you will find it out soon. Me, I'd love to hear this book read out loud!½

Hot beautiful angry poetry flowing like lava out of the mouth of a sixties art volcano is a more accurate description than the narrative novel described on the cover copy. I was first introduced to LeRoi Jones when as a college student I was blasted and impressed by reading his plays Dutchman/and The Slave. My reference point was quite limited by age and experience but I was drawn to his powerful words nonetheless. Since then I only briefly read him as he became Amiri Baraka and followed him from afar through the years until his death. This work is a wondrous surprise and a take on Inferno as imagined by a black city-youth with more language than he knew what to do with. I am exhausted and a little scared.

Very provocative book about African-americans and music. The author has an inspiring perspective.

For a white woman to review these plays would seem an adventure in irony, considering the content of the plays. I will leave it at that.½