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

[JSngry]

This whole discussion gets heated, but the thing to bear in mind is that most discussing it have never visited---let alone spent any time talking to both sides in---Israel, thereby not to be taken all that seriously IMO.

So...when I hear a bunch of white folk - most of whom have never visited, let alone spent any time talking to the people of, the urban inner city - blasting rap/hi-hop/etc. as vile crap, I shouldn't take them all that seriously?

Good, because I don't!

[Chuck Nessa]

[JSngry]

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.

[Face of the Bass]

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.

[Pete C]

The whole poem? Or just those words?

Do you consider it a good poem?

[Face of the Bass]

The whole poem? Or just those words?

Do you consider it a good poem?

Not really. It's obviously more intended as spoken word than as written literature...I think parts of it are good and parts of it are bad.

[JSngry]

It's a rant, and should be recognized/evaluated as such.

[Pete C]

I suppose Howl is a rant too, but it can be judged as poetry.

[JSngry]

Well, good!

[Pete C]

Perhaps there would have been no controversy if Baraka had been named the Ranter Laureate of New Jersey...

[JSngry]

But seriously - do "I" think it's a "good poem"? I don't know, what/whose criteria/agenda am I supposed to use? Whose do I want to use? Whose will I use?

All I can tell you is that as a further expansion upon Malcolm X's "chickens coming home to roost" comment in the aftermath of JFK's assassination, I think that, yes, it effectively communicates the notion that "Collective Capitalist Evil" (remember, he asked "who put the Jews in ovens, and who helped them do it?") led to an inevitable bitch-slapping of The Current Home Of Collective Capitalist Evil.

.

The Forever Radical in me (as well as the More Mature Objective Observer) has to agree that there is no small truth to this notion, even as The Proud American in me has to agree that This Cannot Stand, the Economic Realist in me knows that, like damn near everything else, Capitalism is only as good (or evil) as the Capitalists who practice it, and the Mature Adult in me has no problem whatsoever in calling bullshit on the conspiracy theory nonsense (here as well as elsewhere). "Conspiracies" do exist (hell, what's a well-executed five year business plan if not a conspiracy?), but...absent any corroborating evidence, get real, ya' know?

I also know that I do enjoy hearing Baraka reciting his work, a lot more than I do most poets. A helluva lot more. I often enjoy his work more in the hearing than in the reading.

I also think that the hootie-owl thing at the end is a very Monkish thing to do.

That's what I think.

[Larry Kart]

The concluding stanza (of two) of Jones' circa 1966 poem "For Tom Postell, Dead Black Poet," from his book "Black Magic: Poetry 1961-1977":

Now I know what the desert thing was. Why they fled from us

into their caves. Why they hate me now. What Martin Duberman (what

kind of man...) a Duber man, dobiedoo... Why they hate me

having seen them as things, and the resistance to light, and the

heart of goodness sucked off, vampires, flying in our midst, at the

corner, selling us our few horrible minutes of discomfort and frus

tration. Smile, jew, Dance, jew. Tell me you love me, jew. I got

something for you now though. I got something foryou. like you dig,

I got. I got this thing, goes pulsating through black everything

universal meaning. I got the extermination blues, jewboys. I got

the hitler syndrome figured. What that simpleton meant. He can't

stand their desert smell, their closeness to the truth. What

Father Moses gave them, and lifted them off their hands. A Magic

Charm. A black toe sewn in their throats. To talk, to get up

off their hands, and walk, like men (they will tell you.

So come for the rent, jewboys, or come ask me for a book, or

sit in the courts handing down yr judgments, still I got something

for you, gonna give it to my brothers, so they'll know what your whole

story is, then one day, jewboys, we all, even my wig wearing mother

gonna put it on you all at once.

[JSngry]

And BOOM goes the dynamite.

[Pete C]

I wondered whether the Duberman reference quoted above was some homophobic thing, but apparently Duberman called him out in the sixties for being a boring lunatic.

[JSngry]

I mean, seriously - am I supposed to read that (again, yes, I know the work) and pretend that I don't know about the historical tensions between inner city African Americans and Jews, say OMG, that's TERRIBLE, and then run away in disgust?, game over as far as all that's concerned?

I can't do that.

I do know about the historical tensions between inner city African Americans and Jews.

I also know about the recent (and ongoing) tensions between inner city African-Americans and Asians.

I also know that lack of economic wholeness is one legacy of slavery that has never been fully resolved in America, and probably never will be. I don't have an answer, and there probably isn't one. "Let it go" and reparations are both ridiculously simplistic notions in both theory and practice.

So yeah, there's problems, frictions, ugliness, whatever. And there probably are mau-maus, ready or or otherwise, some of whom I know and many more I don't, who, under the just-so confluence of circumstances probalby would slit my throat and kill my babies. I'd be as shocked and disappointed in the Spirit Of Human Resiliency if there wasn't as I would be Scared As Shit if it actually went down.

And yet, life goes on.

One more thing I know - so far, The Rhetoric Of Hatred hasn't fixed anything, but neither has the Spirit Of Brotherhood. One might be forgiven for contemplating the possibility that The Ultimate Answer is to find wholeness within and then go likewise from there, to there.

To that end, I'm not so sure that I (or anybody, really) should be the one to assume that the path to The Ultimate Answer will always be either peaceful or quiet.

[JSngry]

I'm really surprised that none of Jones' more passionate detractors have accused being to "radical poetry" what Hard Bop was to jazz...

Not sure if the first "casualty of war" is truth or humor...

Edited March 4, 2012 by JSngry

[danasgoodstuff]

I, too, read Black Music & Blues People and various other bits 'n pieces of Mr. Jones' work many years ago. Even then he was half full of shit, or totally full half the time,,,BUT when he was good he was very good indeed, especially when he was making the connection between the New Music he so loved and not letting your self be limited to any received notion of who you were or could be. "you're no THING" he cried. And I heard and was moved. And then he went and became a thing himself, an ugly stupid thing. and no amount of historical context makes that any less so or less tragic, and only slightly more understandable, IMHO YMMV ...into infinity.

Edited March 4, 2012 by danasgoodstuff

[medjuck]

I mean, seriously - am I supposed to read that (again, yes, I know the work) and pretend that I don't know about the historical tensions between inner city African Americans and Jews, say OMG, that's TERRIBLE, and then run away in disgust?, game over as far as all that's concerned?

I can't do that.

I do know about the historical tensions between inner city African Americans and Jews.

I also know about the recent (and ongoing) tensions between inner city African-Americans and Asians.

I also know that lack of economic wholeness is one legacy of slavery that has never been fully resolved in America, and probably never will be. I don't have an answer, and there probably isn't one. "Let it go" and reparations are both ridiculously simplistic notions in both theory and practice.

So yeah, there's problems, frictions, ugliness, whatever. And there probably are mau-maus, ready or or otherwise, some of whom I know and many more I don't, who, under the just-so confluence of circumstances probalby would slit my throat and kill my babies. I'd be as shocked and disappointed in the Spirit Of Human Resiliency if there wasn't as I would be Scared As Shit if it actually went down.

And yet, life goes on.

One more thing I know - so far, The Rhetoric Of Hatred hasn't fixed anything, but neither has the Spirit Of Brotherhood. One might be forgiven for contemplating the possibility that The Ultimate Answer is to find wholeness within and then go likewise from there, to there.

To that end, I'm not so sure that I (or anybody, really) should be the one to assume that the path to The Ultimate Answer will always be either peaceful or quiet.

I don't claim to speak for all Jews but speaking for myself fuck him and fuck you.

[JSngry]

Yeah, well, fuck us all.

And life will still go on.

[AllenLowe]

1) Duberman also wrote a very powerful theater piece called In White America. Sort of, IIRC, a history of African American life. I saw it in, maybe, 1967.

2) I was doing "black" before anyone else was doing "black" - but at least when I did "black" you could understand the words. *****

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.....

It avoids the real consequences of ant-semitism.

****from The Sunshine Boys

[robertoart]

1) Duberman also wrote a very powerful theater piece called In White America. Sort of, IIRC, a history of African American life. I saw it in, maybe, 1967.

2) I was doing "black" before anyone else was doing "black" - but at least when I did "black" you could understand the words. *****

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.....

It avoids the real consequences of ant-semitism.

****from The Sunshine Boys

What do you mean by this?

[robertoart]

Of course if there is any ambiguity that has people debating and arguing about whether someone is anti semitic, as opposed to exercising critical thought/expression with regard to Zionism, then its a flawed expression anyway. No matter what the artists true heart.

Can it merely be argued for, as Black vernacular writing, as many critical supporters seem to be doing?

[AllenLowe]

not sure what you are asking - are you saying that Baraka's brand of anti-semitism is a form of African American vernacular expression? If so, then he is part of the world's largest historical subculture. Time for an article in an Academic journal: "Jew Hating in the Diaspora: The Atlantic Origins of Pacific Psychotic Expression, and White Offshoots: from Dred Scott to Scott in Dredlocks"

[robertoart]

No, what I am trying to say is that not being famiiar with Baraka much more than liner notes and as a name associated with the music I love, this thread prompted me to explore him further.

Albeit from the distance of google books and other online interviews and critiques etc. I was as confronted as anyone would be by the spotlighting of Jewish people as a target of his writing.

I immediately tried to argue away the distaste I felt, because I didn't want someone who I would otherwise regard as a courageous figure, to be stained in mind in this way.

I haven't been able to reconcile that.

Others I have read during my searches, appear to be reconciling it by saying that Baraka is using deliberately incendiary language that I assume they are suggesting is a mode of African American creative and cultural resistance. I would have to go back through my search engine to find the actual references.

[Face of the Bass]

I'm reading his autobiography right now...the first chapter is brilliant. In the spirit of some above, I say fuck anybody who says fuck him. So yeah, fuck off. My understanding is that Baraka later repudiated the anti-Semitism found in his black Nationalist period, after he became a Communist.

In my book he's one of the best American writers of the last half-century, when you take in his whole output, from the Beat period to the Dutchman and the Slave to Cuba Libre and the Home essays to his autobiography and of course, his writings on jazz. Other writers could only dream of being so versatile and influential in so many areas.

Also, dismissing the historical animosities that have existed between African Americans and Jews by comparing them to Nazis and Jews is repulsive. But again, that's just me, and as the spirit of this thread now says, fuck everybody who disagrees with me.