Black Music [Paperback]

Imamu Amiri Baraka (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1980

In the essay “Jazz and the White Critic” LeRoi Jones observes: “Most jazz critics have been white Americans, but most important jazz musicians have not been.” In Black Music, his perceptive and provocative collection of articles, reviews, profiles, interviews, liner notes, and new essays, Jones has offered a remedy of sorts. In brilliant discussions of Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Don Cherry, and Sun-Ra, he examines each musician’s personality, background, musical ambitions, accomplishments, and disappointments, to illuminate both the context and spirit of jazz.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This scintillating collection by Amiri Imamu Baraka, published in 1968 under his birth name Leroi Jones, covers a wide range of jazz writings from 1959 to 1967. Baraka's engaging and prophetic portraits of Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Bobby Bradford, Cecil Taylor, Thelonious Monk, Roy Haynes, Don Cherry, and John Coltrane (whom he called "the heaviest spirit") beam with an electric and fluid language that mirrors those artists' speed-of-light improvisations. In "Jazz and the White Critic," which blasts white critics who judge jazz by European, rather than African American, standards, Jones wrote, "As Western people, the sociocultural thinking of 18th-century Europe comes to us as history and legacy that is a continuous and organic part of the 20th-century West. The sociocultural philosophy of the Negro in America ... is no less specific and no less important for any intelligent critical speculation about the music that came out of it." His analysis of the burgeoning avant-garde scene in "Apple Cores #1-6," "New York Loft and Coffee Shop Jazz," and "The Jazz Avant-Garde" accurately depicts the artistic promise and peril of that period in the words of a literary genius who was there and helped create it. --Eugene Holley Jr. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“[This collection of pieces] written in the 1960's provides a clear picture of where one segment of the modern Negro community stands musically--and socially. . . . It is a valuable statement by a frequently angry, sometimes eloquent and always important writer.”–Library Journal --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 221 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co (June 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688243444
• ISBN-13: 978-0688243449
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,831,966 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Politics and Art, June 9, 2003

By 

deest "deest" (STUDIO CITY, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Music (Paperback)

Too often, Baraka is critiqued for his artistry or his politics alone--with Black Music, the floor gets opened to anyone or everyone with an opinion on jazz or blues music. Black Music is Baraka's smart, personally charged account of the forms and culture inherent to black music, and thus its political value as a testament to a nation within a nation. Reading Baraka's intimate thoughts on such a personal subject should be the sole impetus for the reader.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For anyone who wants an educated and scholarly look at 1960s Jazz, February 15, 2010

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Music (AkashiClassics: Renegade Reprint Series) (Paperback)

Jazz caught hold in the early twentieth century and has stayed strong through it. "Black Music" is a collection of jazz criticisms and thought from Amiri Baraka, also known as Leroi Jones. Focusing on the 1960s, Akashic books has reprinted this acclaimed volume as Baraka offers much insight into Jazz legends such as Johnathan Coltrane, Miles Davis, and many more. For anyone who wants an educated and scholarly look at 1960s Jazz, "Black Music" is an ideal selection.

4 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK but why all the hype?, May 8, 2000

By 

Fax (Tokyo, Suginami-ku Japan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Music (Paperback)

After hearing Leroi Jones on Sunny Murray and the NYAQ's records, and reading little excerpts of some of his reviews in books on free jazz, I thought I'd pick this up and check it out. I did; it was OK; but not much more than OK. I felt like most of the information available here is readily found elsewhere, and that any new perspective he brings to the issues (meaning basically a black nationalist/radical one) is easily enough visible in other places--better to read Fanon or Malcolm X than to let that music play in the background in a jazz book like this one. If that's your taste you might be better off with John Szwed's book on Sun Ra. This book is OK though, and if you haven't already read a number of jazz books you might find it fresh and interesting--I simply didn't. Well written though.