Why does LeRoi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka) hate Hard bop?

[Pete C]

Hmmm...doesn't seem like hashing/rehashing all this out is the best use of my undivided attention...there's no sex to be had, no music to be made, nor good food to be eaten.

All right, I'll grant you a multitasking exception.

[JSngry]

Gee, thanks. Can I get that in writing in case I have to be off from work?

[Larry Kart]

The "Pussy Eater" thing...you do know that that's got nothing at all to do with Jews, don't you, not in and of itself. The appropriateness of cunnilingus was the subject of some of the more prolonged (and at times unintentionally hilarious) debates I ever had back in the day, when my jazz was going in search of itself. Termites!

The rest of it, yeah, there's issues there, to be sure. But substitute "jews" with "white" and you've got any number of variants on various rants (poetic and otherwise), I've heard over the years from local-ish Southern Black Poets, for whom having any sort of "Jewish Power Structure" to confront was not as much a reality as it would have been for Barka at that time & place. Landlords, academics, intellectuals, literati, etc.

All of which is just to say that the gut instinct is to take it at least somewhat personally. I mean, how can you not?

I don't know that the gut instinct always produces the most constructive ultimate outcome, though.

It's like wanting to get off the merry-go-round but never getting off the damn horse.

In the context of the poem (and BTW, couple it with the previously quoted second stanza to see Jones' "evolution" in action) pussy eating for Jones (and it would seem for Postell) certainly has something to do with Jews because the girl he's "shacked up with" is "a fat jew girl" (that you, Hettie?), and further there is the sexual "ideology" in some circles that cunnilingus places the man in an unmanly subservient or servant relationship to the woman, while in genital intercourse he is manly and dominant. Then, and in tune with this, there is the direct oral contact with bodily fluids theme, which perhaps flows (so to speak) into the crucial "jews talked through my mouth" business. Finally, there is FWIW Jones' statement that he "wallowed" in Postell's poetic "intestines." It's a "gut instinct" poem for sure. Also, not to be too literal-minded, but it would seem that Jones' act of pussy eating probably took place in the sight of Postell and another guy, and that in the course of Postell's angry response to this (and other things), Jones says that "You screamed and slobbered on me, to hear you." (My emphasis) Ah, the intimacy. But again, I think that poem is all the better for putting it all in the pot and stirring.

[JSngry]

In the context of the poem (and BTW, couple it with the previously quoted second stanza to see Jones' "evolution" in action) pussy eating for Jones (and it would seem for Postell) certainly has something to do with Jews because the girl he's "shacked up with" is "a fat jew girl" (that you, Hettie?), and further there is the sexual "ideology" in some circles that cunnilingus places the man in an unmanly subservient or servant relationship to the woman, while in genital intercourse he is manly and dominant.

Believe me, at one time that particular sexual ideology was a very dominant one among African-American males I knew, It was one of those "under the carpet" (no pun intended, I swear) things that didn't get discussed until guards were let all the way down. And this was in the sexually "liberated" mid-70s! Those who admitted to it were subject to much heat from their peers, believe me. Millie Jackson spent a large portion on one cut of her live album addressing the issue, essentially asserting that it was time for that nonsense (the enthusiastic rejection of cunnilingus) to end!

Then there's the (mostly Southern, I believe) folkloric belief that putting menstrual blood in a man's food is a way to keep him hooked. That's some old, old hoodoo shit right there.

So you're already cunillinguating with a menstruating woman. Being fat and Jewish is just icing on that particular Freak Cake!

And...I can see readers recoiling in horror as we go down this road...

Edited March 4, 2012 by JSngry

[AllenLowe]

Hettie is small, and definitely not fat - I have her book, with pics, and I met her, briefly, about 1990. She was very pretty.

[Face of the Bass]

Fuck off. The next time you come up with an original thought, trying writing a post longer than one sentence.

I was making a compressed statement about the assumptions and agendas underlying all aesthetics. Were you familiar with Baraka's work in your earlier right-wing Roman Catholic extremist incarnation, and if so, how did you view it then?

I have never in my life been a "Roman Catholic extremist." Despite a childhood's worth of indoctrination, I've never been a devout Christian of any kind. I first became aware of Amiri Baraka's poetry in the 1990s, when I was studying poetry as an undergraduate at George Washington University. I was ambivalent on his work at that time. Like everybody else paying attention, I followed the 2002 controversy over Somebody Blew Up America and thought his conspiratorial musings were embarrassing, although I don't recall thinking it was anti-Semitic. Not long after that, around 2003 or so, I read Blues People and loved it, and started reading his jazz criticism. I was also vaguely familiar with the Dutchman though had not read it or seen it performed. It is only in the last year or so that I've thought about him seriously, after coming across a book of his selected poems at a used book store in Georgetown. In the last week I've read Home (the essay Cuba Libre is fantastic), and in the last two days I've started reading his autobiography. The first chapter, on his childhood, is very well written. IMO anyone who calls him a mediocre writer, regardless of their political orientation, doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about.

What I most admire about Jones is that he is very mercurial...it's all out there in the public record at this point. Allen can continue posting anti-Jewish poems he wrote in the 1960s to his heart's content, but those don't necessarily describe at all where he is at now. The man has been a public intellectual for the last 50 years...his journey is far more fascinating than all the nice, refined boring poetry that usually gets championed by the literary classes.

[robertoart]

The "Pussy Eater" thing...you do know that that's got nothing at all to do with Jews, don't you, not in and of itself. The appropriateness of cunnilingus was the subject of some of the more prolonged (and at times unintentionally hilarious) debates I ever had back in the day, when my jazz was going in search of itself. Termites!

The rest of it, yeah, there's issues there, to be sure. But substitute "jews" with "white" and you've got any number of variants on various rants (poetic and otherwise), I've heard over the years from local-ish Southern Black Poets, for whom having any sort of "Jewish Power Structure" to confront was not as much a reality as it would have been for Barka at that time & place. Landlords, academics, intellectuals, literati, etc.

All of which is just to say that the gut instinct is to take it at least somewhat personally. I mean, how can you not?

I don't know that the gut instinct always produces the most constructive ultimate outcome, though.

It's like wanting to get off the merry-go-round but never getting off the damn horse.

So Baraka is fingering the Jewish Power Structure as the biggest impediment to self determination?

[Larry Kart]

In the context of the poem (and BTW, couple it with the previously quoted second stanza to see Jones' "evolution" in action) pussy eating for Jones (and it would seem for Postell) certainly has something to do with Jews because the girl he's "shacked up with" is "a fat jew girl" (that you, Hettie?), and further there is the sexual "ideology" in some circles that cunnilingus places the man in an unmanly subservient or servant relationship to the woman, while in genital intercourse he is manly and dominant.

Believe me, at one time that particular sexual ideology was a very dominant one among African-American males I knew, It was one of those "under the carpet" (no pun intended, I swear) things that didn't get discussed until guards were let all the way down. And this was in the sexually "liberated" mid-70s! Those who admitted to it were subject to much heat from their peers, believe me. Millie Jackson spent a large portion on one cut of her live album addressing the issue, essentially asserting that it was time for that nonsense (the enthusiastic rejection of cunnilingus) to end!

Then there's the (mostly Southern, I believe) folkloric belief that putting menstrual blood in a man's food is a way to keep him hooked. That's some old, old hoodoo shit right there.

So you're already cunillinguating with a menstruating woman. Being fat and Jewish is just icing on that particular Freak Cake!

And...I can see readers recoiling in horror as we go down this road...

Yeah, but again for Jones, in the context of this poem and the experiences it speaks of, the girlfriend on whom he performs cunnilingus being "fat and Jewish" seems to be a bit more than icing on the cake. For one thing, it seems to matter to Postell, whose opinion certainly matters to Jones. For another, assuming that by "fat" Jones means that she was not conventionally all that attractive, it's a way of saying that her being Jewish somehow was a point in her favor with Jones at the time -- a sign of how far, from his latter-day "enlightened" perspective, he had been into demeaning his own identity. As he says: "I strode with them, played with them, thought myself/ one with them, and jews were talking through/ my mouth."

[Pete C]

The first chapter, on his childhood, is very well written. IMO anyone who calls him a mediocre writer, regardless of their political orientation, doesn't know what the fuck they are talking about.

FWIW, just a general statement (I haven't read the book), but "well written" and "mediocre writer" are not mutually exclusive concepts.

Are the "literary classes" a monolithic cabal?

Edited March 4, 2012 by Pete C

[fasstrack]

I give a lot of to anything when it gets to the point of people getting personally offended as a result of somebody else's right to rant, rationally or otherwise.

Not everybody digs Zionism, not everybody digs Jews (collectively or individually), not everybody digs Black folk (ditto), not everybody digs White folk (ditto again), etc etc etc.

Oh the fuck well. Them that's got shall get, them that's not will tend to be pissed, and so it fucking goes.

I'm hip. Amen.

[fasstrack]

that poem is disgusting and repulsive. There are no other words. It is possible to be anti-Zionist without being anti-semitic, of course. But that poem has nothing to do with any rational political belief.

The whole poem? Or just those words?

There's a very fine line that needs to be watched: many people claim just that, that they are anti-Zionist and not anti-Jewish. I say follow the deeds, not the words.

Yes, but it works both ways. Anti-Semitic people sometimes try to take cover by claiming they are only anti-Zionist, and at the same time pro-Israeli people sometimes try to paint people who have legitimate disagreements with Israeli policy (or with Zionism in general) as anti-Semites. It may be a fine line between the two that gets abused on all sides all the time, but it does exist.

Sure.

[Pete C]

I have never in my life been a "Roman Catholic extremist."

Sorry, I thought I remembered your extremist anti-choice stance of some years ago as coming from an R.C. perspective (the same era as your support for the Iraq war).

[fasstrack]

Zionism is a movement of National Liberation. But you can pick your own allies.

And here's that little poem I mentioned earlier:

Hey Jew boy with that yamaka on your head

You pale faced Jew boy I wish you were dead . . .

Jew boy you took my religion and adopted it for you

But you know that black people were the original hebrews

When the UN made Israel a free, independent state

Little four and five-year-old boys threw had grenades

They hated the black Arabs with all their might

And you, Jew boy, said it was alright

And then you came to America the land of the free

Took over the school system to perpetuate white supremacy

Cause you know, Jew boy, there's only one reason you made it

You had a clean white face colorless and faded.

That's the poem I mentioned that Julius Lester read on WBAI in '68. A hard rain soon fell, with the hardest pellets landing on Lester.....

[Face of the Bass]

I have never in my life been a "Roman Catholic extremist."

Sorry, I thought I remembered your extremist anti-choice stance of some years ago as coming from an R.C. perspective (the same era as your support for the Iraq war).

Ah, no more extremist than your anti-theism.

[Larry Kart]

I think he was being ironic or semi-ironic, but I treasure Ethan Iverson's remark about Jones/Baraka a number of posts back, in the course of a dialogue with Stanley Crouch:

"Well, as a flabby white intellectual liberal, I will always be willing to give an angry black man a hearing."

[JSngry]

The "Pussy Eater" thing...you do know that that's got nothing at all to do with Jews, don't you, not in and of itself. The appropriateness of cunnilingus was the subject of some of the more prolonged (and at times unintentionally hilarious) debates I ever had back in the day, when my jazz was going in search of itself. Termites!

The rest of it, yeah, there's issues there, to be sure. But substitute "jews" with "white" and you've got any number of variants on various rants (poetic and otherwise), I've heard over the years from local-ish Southern Black Poets, for whom having any sort of "Jewish Power Structure" to confront was not as much a reality as it would have been for Barka at that time & place. Landlords, academics, intellectuals, literati, etc.

All of which is just to say that the gut instinct is to take it at least somewhat personally. I mean, how can you not?

I don't know that the gut instinct always produces the most constructive ultimate outcome, though.

It's like wanting to get off the merry-go-round but never getting off the damn horse.

So Baraka is fingering the Jewish Power Structure as the biggest impediment to self determination?

Yeah, sure. Because it's "the" instead of "a" and it's "the biggest" or nothing at all

Thanks for playing!.

In the context of the poem (and BTW, couple it with the previously quoted second stanza to see Jones' "evolution" in action) pussy eating for Jones (and it would seem for Postell) certainly has something to do with Jews because the girl he's "shacked up with" is "a fat jew girl" (that you, Hettie?), and further there is the sexual "ideology" in some circles that cunnilingus places the man in an unmanly subservient or servant relationship to the woman, while in genital intercourse he is manly and dominant.

Believe me, at one time that particular sexual ideology was a very dominant one among African-American males I knew, It was one of those "under the carpet" (no pun intended, I swear) things that didn't get discussed until guards were let all the way down. And this was in the sexually "liberated" mid-70s! Those who admitted to it were subject to much heat from their peers, believe me. Millie Jackson spent a large portion on one cut of her live album addressing the issue, essentially asserting that it was time for that nonsense (the enthusiastic rejection of cunnilingus) to end!

Then there's the (mostly Southern, I believe) folkloric belief that putting menstrual blood in a man's food is a way to keep him hooked. That's some old, old hoodoo shit right there.

So you're already cunillinguating with a menstruating woman. Being fat and Jewish is just icing on that particular Freak Cake!

And...I can see readers recoiling in horror as we go down this road...

Yeah, but again for Jones, in the context of this poem and the experiences it speaks of, the girlfriend on whom he performs cunnilingus being "fat and Jewish" seems to be a bit more than icing on the cake. For one thing, it seems to matter to Postell, whose opinion certainly matters to Jones. For another, assuming that by "fat" Jones means that she was not conventionally all that attractive, it's a way of saying that her being Jewish somehow was a point in her favor with Jones at the time -- a sign of how far, from his latter-day "enlightened" perspective, he had been into demeaning his own identity. As he says: "I strode with them, played with them, thought myself/ one with them, and jews were talking through/ my mouth."

I can see that.

I can also see the whole thing from the perspective of where he's been relative to where he's going instead of the other way around, if indeed there is such a thing.

After a while, I get off the horse, because that really is the only way to get off the merry-go-round.

Edited March 4, 2012 by JSngry

[AllenLowe]

Joel - it was actually Leslie Campbell, a community activist, who read that poem. Lester wrote a book called "Look out Whitey Black Power's Gonna Get your Momma" IIRC.

[cih]

IIRC, Jones in his writings about music eventually did take just that stance toward the jazz avant garde, saying that it had broken faith with the "street," that is with "The People" and their needs -- this a la the Socialist Realism reaction to the Soviet artistic avant garde in the late '20s and early '30s in Russia, a chunk of history with which Jones was quite familiar.

"just to say, fwiw - I read something about this the other day (when this thread began) - a short piece on him by Robin DG kelley re. his essay on Aimé Césaire (which I haven't read) - where he criticizes Surrealist revolutionary practise from his Marxist-Leninist position and blames it for erring in the direction of primitivism and exoticism (much as the Communist party did in the thirties...)

Also re. cunnilingus - maybe some African American males were more sexually liberated in the thirties than the seventies - "What is that tastes like gravy" et al... "I tasted last night, the night before, if I keep this appetite I'm going to taste a little more"

[fasstrack]

Joel - it was actually Leslie Campbell, a community activist, who read that poem. Lester wrote a book called "Look out Whitey Black Power's Gonna Get your Momma" IIRC.

From Ocean Hill-Brownsville? Or am I conflating that with another local then hot-button issue?

[Pete C]

We're all right: Campbell read the poem on Lester's program...

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/2/27/wbais-problems-pwbai-fm-new-york-citys/

[Dan Gould]

Joel - it was actually Leslie Campbell, a community activist, who read that poem. Lester wrote a book called "Look out Whitey Black Power's Gonna Get your Momma" IIRC.

Oh my god, this brings back memories. In grad school at Washington University in St. Louis there was a huge text book tent sale and I stumbled across that ludicrous title (pretty sure its " ... Yo' Momma"). Had too many other legit poli-sci books to buy but I regretted putting it down and when I tried to find it again it was gone. Of course this was long before the internet when you could google a title and find more copies than you could shake an anti-semitic hack at.

Carry on.

[AllenLowe]

it was the Oceanhill Brownsville decentralization fight, that quickly turned into a racial and religious hot spot. As I said earlier, Hentoff did great work on exposing the Teachers Union's attempt to fan the flames, with even fake leaflets. Not that Leslie Campbell was innocent. I was a young kid who lived on Long Island during that whole thing, and I remember it well.

[robertoart]

The "Pussy Eater" thing...you do know that that's got nothing at all to do with Jews, don't you, not in and of itself. The appropriateness of cunnilingus was the subject of some of the more prolonged (and at times unintentionally hilarious) debates I ever had back in the day, when my jazz was going in search of itself. Termites!

The rest of it, yeah, there's issues there, to be sure. But substitute "jews" with "white" and you've got any number of variants on various rants (poetic and otherwise), I've heard over the years from local-ish Southern Black Poets, for whom having any sort of "Jewish Power Structure" to confront was not as much a reality as it would have been for Barka at that time & place. Landlords, academics, intellectuals, literati, etc.

All of which is just to say that the gut instinct is to take it at least somewhat personally. I mean, how can you not?

I don't know that the gut instinct always produces the most constructive ultimate outcome, though.

It's like wanting to get off the merry-go-round but never getting off the damn horse.

So Baraka is fingering the Jewish Power Structure as the biggest impediment to self determination?

Yeah, sure. Because it's "the" instead of "a" and it's "the biggest" or nothing at all

Thanks for playing!.

In the context of the poem (and BTW, couple it with the previously quoted second stanza to see Jones' "evolution" in action) pussy eating for Jones (and it would seem for Postell) certainly has something to do with Jews because the girl he's "shacked up with" is "a fat jew girl" (that you, Hettie?), and further there is the sexual "ideology" in some circles that cunnilingus places the man in an unmanly subservient or servant relationship to the woman, while in genital intercourse he is manly and dominant.

Believe me, at one time that particular sexual ideology was a very dominant one among African-American males I knew, It was one of those "under the carpet" (no pun intended, I swear) things that didn't get discussed until guards were let all the way down. And this was in the sexually "liberated" mid-70s! Those who admitted to it were subject to much heat from their peers, believe me. Millie Jackson spent a large portion on one cut of her live album addressing the issue, essentially asserting that it was time for that nonsense (the enthusiastic rejection of cunnilingus) to end!

Then there's the (mostly Southern, I believe) folkloric belief that putting menstrual blood in a man's food is a way to keep him hooked. That's some old, old hoodoo shit right there.

So you're already cunillinguating with a menstruating woman. Being fat and Jewish is just icing on that particular Freak Cake!

And...I can see readers recoiling in horror as we go down this road...

Yeah, but again for Jones, in the context of this poem and the experiences it speaks of, the girlfriend on whom he performs cunnilingus being "fat and Jewish" seems to be a bit more than icing on the cake. For one thing, it seems to matter to Postell, whose opinion certainly matters to Jones. For another, assuming that by "fat" Jones means that she was not conventionally all that attractive, it's a way of saying that her being Jewish somehow was a point in her favor with Jones at the time -- a sign of how far, from his latter-day "enlightened" perspective, he had been into demeaning his own identity. As he says: "I strode with them, played with them, thought myself/ one with them, and jews were talking through/ my mouth."

I can see that.

I can also see the whole thing from the perspective of where he's been relative to where he's going instead of the other way around, if indeed there is such a thing.

After a while, I get off the horse, because that really is the only way to get off the merry-go-round.

Sometimes I think you need footnotes.

3) Jim, I think you are getting bogged down in relativist thinking. It's like saying, well, the Nazis and the Jews didn't get along either.....

I really don't see any possible way that Black America will become The New Nazis. Ever. Not even with a secretly-Muslim black president!

Until that comes to the table as an even remotely viable possibility, I say let's keep it in the ballpark as to how to react to it. There will always be hateful & hurtful language used to express feelings of frustrations and resentments. Sometimes it will be calculated rhetoric, sometimes frenzied rant, sometimes a cry of pain, and sometimes some dumbass talking some ignorant idiocy. Bringing out the Silencers to censure the language does nothing to further the dialogue about why this would be happening, and denies the opportunity to distinguish between disingenuous manipulation, misdirection of legitimate frustration, out and out vile gutter-hate, and, oh by the way, possible self-examination as to why these motherfuckers be so damn ANGRY all the time.

I don't care who you are, no matter where you go, there's going to be somebody who'd rather you not be there (I was adopted at the age of 4 days, so I guess that notion has been with me pretty much all my life at some level), and reflexively shutting them up (or trying to) won't change anything. Nor will "circling the wagons" with your "tribe" especially when your "tribe" contains about as many people with whom you'd just as soon keep away from as not (another less I learned from being adopted).

The only true freedom is Inner Freedom, and like I suggested earlier (and as a result was told to get fucked...gee, that doesn't exactly dispel the paranoia about there being Silencers in the shadows, does it?) the path to Inner Freedom might not always be peaceful or quiet.

Easy to do when the personal is political.

Edited March 5, 2012 by freelancer

[JSngry]

Sometimes I think you need footnotes.

I bought a new pair of Vans today. Socks too.

[medjuck]

I really don't see any possible way that Black America will become The New Nazis. Ever. Not even with a secretly-Muslim black president!

Until that comes to the table as an even remotely viable possibility, I say let's keep it in the ballpark as to how to react to it. There will always be hateful & hurtful language used to express feelings of frustrations and resentments. Sometimes it will be calculated rhetoric, sometimes frenzied rant, sometimes a cry of pain, and sometimes some dumbass talking some ignorant idiocy. Bringing out the Silencers to censure the language does nothing to further the dialogue about why this would be happening, and denies the opportunity to distinguish between disingenuous manipulation, misdirection of legitimate frustration, out and out vile gutter-hate, and, oh by the way, possible self-examination as to why these motherfuckers be so damn ANGRY all the time.

I don't care who you are, no matter where you go, there's going to be somebody who'd rather you not be there (I was adopted at the age of 4 days, so I guess that notion has been with me pretty much all my life at some level), and reflexively shutting them up (or trying to) won't change anything. Nor will "circling the wagons" with your "tribe" especially when your "tribe" contains about as many people with whom you'd just as soon keep away from as not (another less I learned from being adopted).

The only true freedom is Inner Freedom, and like I suggested earlier (and as a result was told to get fucked...gee, that doesn't exactly dispel the paranoia about there being Silencers in the shadows, does it?) the path to Inner Freedom might not always be peaceful or quiet.

So if we hear someone say "let's lynch the nigger" we should meditate? Personally I'd rather say "fuck you" to the speaker and to anyone who defends his rights to say it--even if it leads to charges that I'm a silencer.