For almost half a century, Amiri Baraka has ranked among the most important commentators on African American music and culture. In this brilliant assemblage of his writings on music, the first such collection in nearly twenty years, Baraka blends autobiography, history, musical analysis, and political commentary to recall the sounds, people, times, and places he's encountered. As in his earlier classics, Blues People and Black Music, Baraka offers essays on the famous--Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane--and on those whose names are known mainly by jazz aficionados--Alan Shorter, Jon Jang, and Malachi Thompson. Baraka's literary style, with its deep roots in poetry, makes palpable his love and respect for his jazz musician friends. His energy and enthusiasm show us again how much Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and the others he lovingly considers mattered. He brings home to us how music itself matters, and how musicians carry and extend that knowledge from generation to generation, providing us, their listeners, with a sense of meaning and belonging.
Digging
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"A major contribution to both African American literature and American music criticism."--African American Review
"Meditations on black music, primarily jazz, that American classical music, that will satisfy anyone who desires intelligent thought on the genre."--Beat Scene Magazine
"As lively and compelling as his strongest work of the past."--The Oregonian
"There is much to recommend in this excellent volume of essays."--Magill's Literary Annual / Salem Press
"Offers up history, musical analyses and a political commentary as they relate to African-American music and culture."--Goldmine Magazine
From the Inside Flap
"As a commentator on American music, and African American music in particular, Baraka occupies a unique niche. His intelligence, critical sense, passion, strong political stances, involvement with musicians and in the musical world, as well as in his community, give his work a quality unlike any other. As a reviewer and as someone inside the movement, he writes powerfully about music as few others can or do."--Steven L. Isoardi, author of Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles
"Every jazz musician who has endured beyond changing fashions and warring cultures has had a signature sound. Amiri Baraka--from the very beginning of his challenging, fiery presence on the jazz scene--has brought probing light, between his off-putting thunderclaps, on what is indeed America's classical music. I sometimes disagree insistently with Amiri, and it's mutual; but when he gets past his parochial pyrotechnics, as in choruses in this book, he brings you into the life force of this music."--Nat Hentoff, author of The Jazz Life
"Every jazz musician who has endured beyond changing fashions and warring cultures has had a signature sound. Amiri Baraka--from the very beginning of his challenging, fiery presence on the jazz scene--has brought probing light, between his off-putting thunderclaps, on what is indeed America's classical music. I sometimes disagree insistently with Amiri, and it's mutual; but when he gets past his parochial pyrotechnics, as in choruses in this book, he brings you into the life force of this music."--Nat Hentoff, author of The Jazz Life
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
If you love jazz, or even if you just want to contact the spirit of it, this is the book for you; (equally if you love some free wheeling, imaginative, out of the box prose-poetry with an African-American beat as perhaps only Amiri Baraka can do it). Radically underpins the status of jazz as America's premier music plus marvelous, insightful appreciations of jazz greats combined with personal anecdotes. Heady and enjoyable without measure.
