Amiri Baraka

This work is about the place of jazz and blues in American social, musical, economic, and cultural history. From the music of African slaves in the United States through the music scene of the 1960's, the author traces the influence of what he calls "negro music" on white America -- not only in the context of music and pop culture but also in terms of the values and perspectives passed on through the music. In tracing the music, he brilliantly illuminates...

Fusing the personal and the political in high-voltage verse, Amiri Baraka--"whose long illumination of the black experience in America was called incandescent in some quarters and incendiary in others" (New York Times)--was one of the preeminent literary innovators of the past century. Selected by Paul Vangelisti, this volume comprises the fullest spectrum of Baraka's rousing, revolutionary poems, from his first collection to previously unpublished...

Discusses modern jazz movements and musicians, including Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy, Archie Shepp, and Sun-Ra.

The author, poet, playwright, and composer documents the racial politics of America between 1960 and 1965 in a collection of essays on urban life, boxing, black sexuality, Harlem, and the Cuban revolution.

"The Baptism and The Toilet are two of LeRoi Jones' earliest plays. The Baptism, a viciously comic assault on diverse hypocrisies--religious, social, sexual--which inform contemporary American life, and The Toilet, a tough, relentless study of tenderness crushed and destroyed by an adolescent code of violence, comprise a pair of the most powerful one-act plays to be produced in New York in years."--Back cover.

This new book of previously uncollected poetry (1984-1995) demonstrates Baraka's gift for the music of thought, and reveals his continued mastery of tone and performance. Engaging in the primary issues of African-American music and contemporary politics, and imbuing his homages to such grand figures of America as Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Sarah Vaughn, Albert Ayler, and John Coltrane with a passion that has not abated over the years, Baraka...

Containing these poems which the author most wants to preserve, this volume summarizes the career to date of the man who has been called "the father of modern black poetry." It confirms Amiri Baraka as one of the major figures of contemporary American poetry.

Starting with a Preface to a twenty volume suicide note, and including many out-of-print and limited edition chapbooks and broadsides, Transbluesency: the selected poems of Amiri Baraka concisely illuminates Baraka's almost single-handed renovation of both the nature and form of post-WWII African American literature, and his profound influence on a generation of poets of all ethnic backgrounds.