Product Description

Centered squarely on the Negro-white conflict, both Dutchman and The Slave are literally shocking plays--in ideas, in language, in honest anger. They illuminate as with a flash of lightning a deadly serious problem--and they bring an eloquent and exceptionally powerful voice to the American theatre.

Dutchman opened in New York City on March 24, 1964, to perhaps the most excited acclaim ever accorded an off-Broadway production and shortly thereafter received the Village Voice's Obie Award. The Slave, which was produced off-Broadway the following fall, continues to be the subject of heated critical controversy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

5 Stars for Dutchman, 2 Stars for The Slave
This slim omnibus volume combines the two major plays of one of America's most significant living poets.Critics make much about the racial import of these plays, but they are more damning than that: both say that American society is based inherently on inevitable divisions and gaps.The difference between these two is that only one has stood the test of time as a theatrical experience.

LeRoi Jones, now called Amiri Baraka, was one of the original Beats, though his name is often unjustly left off that roster.He was instrumental to the Black Mountain Poets and has remained innovative for decades, long after other poets have settled into comforting conventionality.These plays are more like poems than dramatic presentations in their finger-popping, jazzy argot.You don't so much follow a narrative as drink in the gestalt the characters' language creates.

"Dutchman" takes place on a New York subway car.Lula, an oversexed white woman, sees young black Clay, with his necktie and unread magazine, as a... well, what DOES she see him as?Students and scholars argue this.But her aggressive forwardness progresses from mere provocation to overt race baiting, cracking the hard shell Clay has carefully built himself.The action of the play constantly ascends, culminating in a tiny race riot of language and power.

This play is mythical in overtones as the characters push back on each other.The title implies that this subway is the Flying Dutchman, doomed never to make port, suggesting this conflict will go on eternally.Gaps of age, sex, and class join forces with race to show how these two people can never be reconciled.As the characters' mutual torment moves from simple vicious taunting to outright persecution, the scene becomes more and more crowded, and the spectacle more public.

"The Slave" uses similar racial incitement in a more realistic setting.With the race revolution finally in motion, its leader, a black poet named Walker, barges in on his white ex-wife, Grace, and her new husband, Easley, demanding the return of his daughters.But his motivations are more complex than that--we have to wonder if he even knows himself what he hopes to accomplish by this invasion.

Jones tries to capture a similar heightened poetic tenor as he did in "Dutchman," but somehow it doesn't pop in the same way.The characters speak like they're reading from textbooks, and the poetry of dialogue only pokes through intermittently.The explicit use of characternyms is a little too much like late Tennessee Williams for comfort.And Walker's revolution, though doubtless heartfelt, seems a little too pat for the level of discontent the characters evidently want to feel.

Considering that Jones left a white wife and two daughters to write revolutionary racial verse, it's hard not to think this is his own wish fulfillment.But that's also too simple an outlook, since at the end Walker, the author's proxy, is no figure a high-minded idealist like Jones would want to be.So what is going on?And why do the characters talk like a manifesto?

There's a reason why, forty-five years later, "Dutchman" is still part of the American theatrical repertory, and "The Slave" is limited to literature and African American Studies classes.The former is a propulsive theatrical experience, a walk through an undiscovered circle of hell, and it hits audiences where we continue to live.The latter is a mix of soapbox and self-criticism that doesn't know where it's going.

Jones, as Baraka, remains a vital force in American letters.Read his poetry or, if you have the privilege, listen to him speak.And definitely read and see "Dutchman," because it's a true contemporary classic."The Slave" is a curiosity, and while it makes enlightening companion reading, that's all it's ever likely to be.

A classic
LeRoi Jones, now known as Amiri Baraka, wrote Dutchman in 1964, but its themes of racism and fear still resonate today. A must for anyone studying African American literature and contemporary drama -- it is a seminal work. The Slave is less successful -- its message is muddled and the dialogue stilted -- yet it is worth reading to get a complete view of Baraka's work.

Liberal America
"Dutchman offers a very realistic study in terms of how "Liberal White American", not racism, is murdering the Black American.

Pure Fury...No Solution
This play is written beautifully in a style that resembles some very late American Dadaist poetry. However if you take the play as a whole, this play lacks any didactic purpose. Baraka is hypocritical in that he has become the hate-monger that he despises. Other than wonderful banter and a powerfully angst-ridden diatribe, this play offers nothing but hate and intolerance.

civil rights
Wow. I think this play portrays an aspect of the black community that cannot be felt by any other community without some feelings of disingenuity. The rage present in the play is overwhelming. The sense of danger and loss is also present, but more subtly so. This play is also very ambiguous and wanting interpretation. I say "wanting interpretation" because Dutchman seems to call for the reader's own interpretation purposefully... the criticism around it is enough to spark a debate, but still the critical aspects are not overwhelmed by the immediacy of emotion and action. ... Read more

Product Description
"The path the slave took to 'citizenship' is what I want to look at. And I make my analogy through the slave citizen's music -- through the music that is most closely associated with him: blues and a later, but parallel development, jazz... [If] the Negro represents, or is symbolic of, something in and about the nature of American culture, this certainly should be revealed by his characteristic music."

So says Amiri Baraka in the Introduction to Blues People, his classic work on 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, Baraka 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 the influence of African Americans on American culture and history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (14)

Interesting & Truthful
The origin of Africans in America and the music they produced over the last three hundred years was very interesting to read. Mr. Jones provides a chronological and historically based history of the evolution of Black music in America.

He also points out that when black music is accepted by the mainstream it becomes a diluted and pitiful shell of its former greater self. I agree. If anyone notices whenever a beloved artist goes mainstream, generally his or her music is so shallow, you wonder what happened to the real person. I guess it is all about the dollars. They want to get paid. They know that most folks in the mainstream society cannot take or intellectually and spiritually relate to the rawness of our people's music. It is too powerful and personal. The black experience is unique, which affects our worldview and attitudes.

However, the black folk, the masses, always create new music or keep the real music alive. We continuously create, and the mainstream is darn well lucky. If not for black folks, I don't know what in de world they would do with dye selves. Lady this would be such a dull place.

An American Treasure
This is one of the most important books on America and American history, culture and citizenship. It would benefit the world if it were incorporated into public education. Someone said that nations are judged by their art and this book examines that subject superlatively. This study of the blues examines the evolving cosmology of the Africans and their journey and creation: the blues, one of the singular most powerful beauties of America. He shows how all American music originated from the blues and how it embraced all other peoples and cultures. Baraka's ability to inhabit the thoughts of the Blue's originators enables us to understand the profundity of their sorrow and sublimity of their joy.

gone where the Southern cross the yella dog
The other day a friend rashly claimed that art and music were equally hard to describe in words.I asked him to tell me about a certain painting of Picasso's.He did, but claimed it wasn't accurate."OK," I said, "you're right, but now tell me about Mozart's Jupiter Symphony."He opened his mouth, closed it, looked at me, and said, "Yeah, I see what you mean."Writing a book about the blues would be equally hard, it seems to me.So, LeRoi Jones did what he could, back in 1963, to tie the indescribable to the more concrete.He wrote a social history of African-Americans in the USA through the prism of music or---maybe on the principle of red and yellow tile floors (are they red with yellow designs or yellow with red designs ?)---he wrote a book on African-American music through the prism of social history.It is one of the most important books on American music (and American society) that you can find.It has stood the test of time.He begins from the Africans who came to North America as slaves bearing very different cultures, confronted by an absolutely different view of the world emanating from their new masters.Here he tries to show how African music became transformed into African-AMERICAN music and then American.He continues then up through the generations of slavery, to Emancipation, migration to the cities, World War I, the Depression, World War II and the bebop age of the Fifties.The book is pre-Civil Rights movement, pre-Martin Luther King.Jones may have looked down on the NAACP and its allies as "white liberal supported organizations", I'm not sure, but they don't appear.The times are symbolized by the use of "Negro" throughout.I agree, the tome is dated, but don't reject it, don't pooh-pooh the man.This is a very intelligent, very worthwhile book.Anyone, particularly from outside the USA, who wants to know the history of African-American music within its social environment ought still to read BLUES PEOPLE.He writes, "If Negro music can be seen to be the result of certain attitudes, certain specific ways of thinking about the world (and only ultimately about the ways in which music can be made), then the basic hypothesis of this book is understood." [p.153]Jones goes to great lengths to get to the bottom of those attitudes and thoughts.

My main criticism, apart from the fact that history dictates that we must be left a half century behind contemporary realities, is that though Jones obviously knew and loved the blues and jazz and all the various styles ( if not swing), his approach is coldly academic, highly dispassionate. He may criticize people who tried to make money, he may downplay all those who "abandoned" their roots, but my disappointment is that there is nothing of himself in the work barring a few mentions of his family.He does not share his enthusiasm.Music is beauty after all. I am sure he wanted the book to be taken as a serious essay, which it is.But in keeping himself removed from the discussion, being so analytic and professional in the style of the day, he has robbed us "readers of the future" of many insights.

African-American experience in the USA expressed itself most particularly in the blues, only later did that musical mode become part of the general American culture, often watered down, sometimes imitated by those who didn't wish to fit in or who wished to cash in.When conditions have changed, when the black middle class has entered mainstream America, and the urban underclass is wrapped up in hip-hop, gangsta rap culture, which is relentlessly commercialized by the powerful media, talking about the blues may seem a matter for historians or ethnomusicologists.Still, BLUES PEOPLE resonates strongly if we try to understand where we have been.As for where we are going---that old line sums it up---we're goin where the Southern cross the yella dog.

Blues People
This is a really interesting look at the evolution of black culture through the lense of music. Some of the author's opinions about later music (50's-60's) may seem out of touch to today's readers, but overall it is well worth reading.

The Best Starting Point
I actually purchased the first paperback edition this book a long time ago, and I learned that it had been out of print for quite some time. It was a time when I was a casual listener of blues and jazz, and didn't think about the roots of the music I was listening to. The book was interesting enough, but it didn't have information about more contemporary stuff, as it was printed in 1963.

Recently, I found this book in the upper shelves of my library, having completely forgotten about it in spite of my infatuation with the blues for the better part of the last two decades. It was a most welcome surprise for me, as it contained a compact but comprehensive introduction to the time period from the first Africans came to America to the 1920s when their music was first recorded, and laid the groundwork to how this music evolved in a sociological context. The rural lifestyle, the reflections of the exodus from the south on the music and subsequent refined, urban sound are discussed in this framework.

Although it would not really appeal to the casual reader and listener, "Blues People" is invaluable for the serious blues and jazz fan for setting the music into the general context of social life and external effects that made this music what it is today. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

He could have been one of the greatest world writers if only...
Amiri Baraka's life was both a great story, but has been having a long, tragic ending since 1965. He is brilliant and talented and could have been one of the world's greatest writers-but after years of dogging his ex-wife Hettie and when it ended her attitude being "You looked better going than you did coming", he never seemed to get over her getting over him. He seems to have been regressing into an abyss of a strange obsession poorly veiled with extreme political stances-he has let this ruin his career (that rant "Ugly" that the Jewish community in Newark misinterpreted and took away his position of poet laureate for was a poem to his ex-wife (one of the lines from it is is "Just look between your legs") and it is painful to see that clip on his site. The brothers I showed that clip to in my town of Philly says in it he looked and sounded like a crackhead on Broad and Erie.) He is also dying of prostate cancer right now possibly triggered because of not letting that one go. He is being exploited and robbed of royalties with printers around the world right now by internet publishing scams as well. I loved his books the Dutchman, the Dead Lecturer, etc-and it hurts my heart what's happening to him now from this hanging on so long to a dead horse. He was brilliant, talented, and had great potential. I hope someday he can finally have salaam before he passes.

The Dutchman
I've read the script and seen the video.Fascinating, well-written examination of behavior, race, and social standards.Should be more well recognized as a great black writer.

frankness, humor, self-examination ....
Autobiographies, even by poets, rarely reach the depths of honest self-examination one finds in their poems. One has only to think of Kenneth Rexroth's tall stories or William Carlos Williams' evasions.

ButMr. Baraka's is different. His has been a journey from a middle classbackground in Newark (keeping in mind that it was not a white middleclass), through Howard University's elitist social structure, the racism ofthe Air Force; his beginnings as a poet & his drift into CharlesOlson's powerful gravity. Many of America's best white poets were among hisfriends & he did much to promote their careers along with his own. Thenhis turn towardleadership of the great Black Awakening of the Sixties,his move "uptown," his embrace of socialism & subsequentreturn to Newark where he continues to influence young writers &activists of all colors & ethnic backgrounds.

There are alsohis controversial plays, his feuds, marriages & arrests. Also hiswitnessing of the Newark Rebellion (the full deadly story never accuratelyreported in the press), his deep understanding of American culture &respect for authentic expression.

That's a lot to cover, butBaraka does so with frankness, humor, self-examination & an occasionalwillingness to admit error without loading up on pointless regrets.

A fine account of a fallible man who, even in his most angry moments,gives the world beautiful things. & that anger is usually over ourfailure to see the beauty of justice.

Bob Rixon, WFMU-FM ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

For anyone who wants an educated and scholarly look at 1960s Jazz
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.

Politics and Art
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.

OK but why all the hype?
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 muchmore than OK. I felt like most of the information available here is readilyfound elsewhere, and that any new perspective he brings to the issues(meaning basically a black nationalist/radical one) is easily enoughvisible in other places--better to read Fanon or Malcolm X than to let thatmusic play in the background in a jazz book like this one. If that's yourtaste you might be better off with John Szwed's book on Sun Ra. This bookis OK though, and if you haven't already read a number of jazz books youmight find it fresh and interesting--I simply didn't. Well written though. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

A classic text of the civil rights-black power era!
Home is essential reading for any serious student of the 1960s, particularly the Black Revolt.Standing next to such classics as The Autobiography of Malcolm X and Soul on Ice, it is one of the best accountsof the Black search for identity and liberation.Here we see Baraka'spolitical evolution. The essays are arranged chronologically, tracing hisdevelopment from "Cuba Libre," an evocative account of his firstexperience with the Cuban Revolution, to his definition of the legacy ofthe fallen leader, Malcolm X.No study of the Black Revolt of the 1960s iscomplete without a reading of "Home," written by one of thefounders of the Black Arts Movement. ... Read more

Product Description
Here, for the first time under one cover, is the collected fiction of one of America's greatest writers. LeRoi Jones, later known as Amiri Baraka, may be most famous for his plays, poetry, and music writings; nut his one published novel, The System of Dante's Hell (1965), his book of short stories, Tales (1967), and his previously unpublished novel 6 Persons (1973-74) give ample evidence that his fiction may even exceed his other work in complexity, invention, confessional recklessness, and contribution to issues of black identity. This volume includes all three of these masterpieces, and supplements them with four previously uncollected stories. Jones's fiction, which shares the acute self-consciousness, autobiographical tendencies, and restlessness of Beat writing, also maintains an uncompromising attitude towards sex and violence: The System of Dante's Hell was banned when first published because of its graphic depiction of homosexual acts. Poetic, provocative, witty, bitter, and aggressive, this book contains some of the most astonishing writing to emerge from a convulsive periods in African American history ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The System of Dante's Hell
I cannot speak for this entire book, but it seems to be the only way to obtain The System of Dante's Hell these days, and this is a truly great book and a must read.

The System of Dante's Hell is a short novel in which a black soldier travels through the American south. Like Dante in hell, Jones/Baraka's tour shows you this hell from the outside, but not really from the outside. Anyway, the book is brilliant. ... Read more

Product Description
Poet and playwright Amiri Baraka is best known as one of the African American writers who helped ignite the Black Arts Movement. This book examines Baraka's cultural approach to Black Power politics and explores his role in the phenomenal spread of black nationalism in the urban centers of late-twentieth-century America, including his part in the election of black public officials, his leadership in the Modern Black Convention Movement, and his work in housing and community development.

Komozi Woodard traces Baraka's transformation from poet to political activist, as the rise of the Black Arts Movement pulled him from political obscurity in the Beat circles of Greenwich Village, swept him into the center of the Black Power Movement, and ultimately propelled him into the ranks of black national political leadership. Moving outward from Baraka's personal story, Woodard illuminates the dynamics and remarkable rise of black cultural nationalism with an eye toward the movement's broader context, including the impact of black migrations on urban ethos, the importance of increasing population concentrations of African Americans in the cities, and the effect of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on the nature of black political mobilization.Amazon.com Review
Sarah Lawrence College professor Komozi Woodard convincingly argues that Amiri Baraka was not only the most original black poet, author, dramatist, and cultural critic to emerge from the 1960s but also that era's most important nexus between the politics and artistic movements. "The serious study of Black Power," he writes, "must begin with an examination of its most important experiments ... specifically, the leadership of Amiri Baraka and the dynamics of black cultural nationalism." Woodard details Baraka's visit to revolutionary Cuba and the influence of Patrice Lumumba on his thinking; the black-arts movement Baraka helped found and the black/Puerto Rican coalitions he forged; his ambitious but flawed housing ventures in Newark, New Jersey; and his heroic efforts to hold together the 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana. Woodard weaves a complex picture detailing the ascendance of a modern cultural icon and the political landscape he helped create. --Eugene Holley Jr. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

rrobinson
As a young man and not knowing much about Amiri Baraka,I walked away with vast knowledge of his life in the late 1960s and early 70s. This book does great justice to the impact Baraka had in the post-civil rights era in Newark. His plans, thoughts and energy are all detailed in this book. Anyone who has any intrest in Black Cutural Nationalism or an intrest in the post-civil rights era should pick up this book. Woodard describes the struggle and changing environment that Newark,NJ goes through as it changes socially and racially.

This is a must read for all interested in politics and race
Woodard writes about the relationship of black power, black cultural arts, and the black nationalist movement with LeRoi Jones, later Amiri Baraka, one of its main supporters. ... He concludes that Black America requires anideological and political arsenal of both nationalism and Marxism. But atno time can the emphasis be purely Marxist or nationalist without doingdamage to the black community. In other words, sectarianism is the enemy ofblack liberation and the fight for equality. This is a must read for allinterested in politics and race in the U.S. Recommended for undergraduates,graduate students, and faculty. -- P. Barton-Kriese, Indiana UniversityEast, Choice July/August 1999

The most important book on Black Power Movement
Professor Peniel Joseph writes that, "Historian Komozi Woodard's `A Nation Within A Nation' ... stands out as the most important book to be written about the Black Power Movement.`A Nation Within A Nation' isreally several books rolled into one.First, it is a well-researched andpainstakingly detailed case study of the dramatic consequences of BlackPower politics on [the] racial and political dynamics of Newark, New Jerseyduring the late 1960s and early 1970s. Second, it is a political biographythat underscores the significance of Amiri Baraka to the Black PowerMovement's rise and eventual decline in American politics. Third, the bookexplores the transformation of black cultural nationalism during the BlackPower era and Baraka's pivotal role in contemporizing black nationalism asan expressive political and cultural vehicle. Finally, it's a study of thedivese and complex matrix that produced black political thought andpractice during the period; a historical interrogation of the national andinternational implications of radical anti-colonial discourses thatundergirded Black Power politics."

One of the most comprehensive studies of black nationalism.
According to Publishers Weekly, "Woodard examines the role of poet Amiri Baraka's `cultural politics' on Black Power and black nationalism in the 1960s. After a brief overview of the evolution of black nationalismsince slavery, he focuses on activities in Northeastern urban centers(Baraka's milieus were Newark, NJ, and, to a lesser extent, New York City). Taking issue with scholars who see cultural nationalism asself-destructive, Woodard finds it "fundamental to the endurance ofthe Black Revolt from the 1960s into the 1970s." California SenatorTom Hayden, says: "The fascinating story of a struggle that nearlysucceeded in creating self-determination in the urban ghetto"And, inProfessor Robin D.G. Kelley's assessment, the book "will be one of themost important studies of black urban politics and culture in the postwarperiod."As far as Professor Michael B. Katz is concerned, it"breaks new ground and revises standard interpretations of the era.Iam particularly impressed with the way he has connected politicalmobilization to movements in the arts, literature, and intellectual life,on the one hand, and to the restructuring of American life, on the other. It's a hardheaded, unflinching analysis, and he tells it well and withgreat feeling."Finally, Professor John Dittmer found it"Balanced and moving.""It should be required reading ...for all citizens who care about the problems of race and class in urbanAmerica. ... quite simply, one of the most important books we have on theblack urban experience in the twentieth century ... by one of the leadingscholars of the African American experience in this country." The bookconcludes that there have been five distinct phases in the history of blacknationality formation in the U.S.The first phase was the ethnogenesis ofAfrican Americans during slavery; that established the social and culturalfoundations of Black America.The second was the black nationalism thatflowered before the Civil War among free Blacks in the urban North.Athird phase resulted from the failure of the Civil War and Reconstructionto guarantee full citizenship for African Americans; under racialoppression and Jim Crow segregation, a subject nation developed in theBlack Belt areas of the South.The most vivid example of that phase ofnationality formation was the great Kansas Exodus.The fourth phase ofblack nationality formation resulted from the Great Migration of perhaps1.5 million African Americans and from the development of large, compact,black concentrations in the ghettos of America; the flowering of thatnationalism is seen in the Garvey Movement of the 1920s.And finally, afifth stage of nationality formation ensued from the migration of 4 millionBlack Americans form the South between 1940 and 1970 and the development ofdozens of "second ghettos," that generated hundreds of urbanuprisings during the 1960s; that sense of modern nationality was heraldedby the Black Power movement and the politics of Black cultural nationalism. ... Read more

Product Description
"Fox offers a clear and important, if brief, consideration of the fiction of Baraka, Reed, and Delany. He renders an especially important service by establishing the relationship among three fictionists whose work has been substantially neglected. . . . Readers will find this volume useful as a starting point for the investigation of recent Afro-American fiction and as an example of the application of poststructuralist criticism to Afro-American fiction." Choice ... Read more