Amiri Baraka

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Amiri Baraka (* 7. October 1934 in Newark , New Jersey as Everett LeRoy Jones ; † 9. January 2014 ) was an American poet, playwright, music critic and prose writer.

Amiri Baraka (middle; 2007)

Life

Amiri Baraka was born as Everett LeRoy Jones . At eighteen he wrote his name LeRoi Jones, in 1967 he took the name Imamu Ameer Baraka , which he later changed to the current form.

Until 1965

Baraka studied philosophy and religious studies at Rutgers University , Columbia University and Howard University without getting a degree. He joined the US Air Force in 1954 and became a sergeant. In 1957 he was denounced as a communist and, when Soviet material was found, he was dishonorably discharged from the army. He then moved to Greenwich Village and initially worked in a record warehouse. During this time his interest in jazz developed ; at the same time he came into contact with the Beat Poets , who had a strong influence on his early poetry. He founded Totem Press in 1958 and married Hettie Cohen that same year. His wife worked as an editor for the Partisan Review and with their experience the couple brought out eight issues of the literary magazine Yūgen (1958–1962).

In 1960 he visited Cuba, which initiated his transformation into a political artist. The poetry collection Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note was published in 1961, and in 1963 Blues People: Negro Music in White America . For his piece Dutchman , which premiered in 1964 , he received an Obie Award that same year . After the assassination of Malcolm X , he distanced himself from the Beat Poets, left his wife and their two children and moved to Harlem as it now as black cultural nationalist mind ( "black cultural nationalist"). Hettie Cohen claims in her autobiography How I Became Hettie Jones (1990) that Baraka abused her throughout her marriage.

1966 to 1980

In 1966 Baraka married his second wife, who would later be called Amina Baraka. From 1967 he taught at San Francisco State University . In the same year he was arrested in Newark during the race riot that broke out after the assassination of Martin Luther King , charged with illicit gun possession and opposition to state violence, and sentenced to three years in prison. This judgment was rejected again in an appeal. In 1967 Jones founded the short-lived record label Jihad , on which the productions of the Jihad Cultural Center in Newark (New Jersey) should appear. The label released only three albums in 1968, the best known being the Sunny Murray LP with Albert Ayler and Don Cherry . In 1968 his second jazz book Black Music was published . In 1970 he supported Kenneth A. Gibson in his candidacy for the office of Mayor of Newark; Gibson was elected the city's first black mayor.

Amiri Baraka gained importance not only through his work as a political organizer, but also through the significant part that he played in the development of a “black aesthetic ”. Above all, his essay The Fire Must Be Permitted to Burn Full Up: Black “Aesthetic” , published in 1970, is one of the central texts in this respect, in which he contrasts the “thinking” of white art with the “feeling” of black art. "Feeling" is oriented towards reality; in feeling reality, the self-realization of the black artist is expressed at the same time; black art is always committed art: What does aesthetic mean? [...] Don't mean it for us Feelings about reality! [...] Ourselves are revealed in whatever we do. Our art shd be ourselves as self vonscious with a commitment to revolution. Which is enlightenment. Revolution is enlightenment! For him, this feeling of reality is primarily shaped by the rhythm, which, according to him, is still intact for the black man; accordingly there is a close connection with black music, jazz. In his “Logic of Feeling”, Baraka consciously dispenses with a rationally logical argumentation, which for him amounts to an instrument of oppression used by whites.

Around 1974 Baraka distanced himself from black nationalism and immediately oriented himself towards Marxism and the liberation movements of the Third World. In 1979 he started teaching at SUNY in the Africana Studies Department . In the same year he was sentenced to social labor service after an argument with his wife. Around this time he begins to write his autobiography. In 1980 he distanced himself from anti-Semitic remarks from earlier years and declared that he had recognized his errors and now sees himself as an anti-Zionist.

From 1980

In 1984 Baraka was appointed full professor. In 1987, he and Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison gave a commemorative address at the funeral of James Baldwin . In 1989 he received the American Book Award for Lifetime Achievement and the Langston Hughes Award . In 1990 he co-wrote Quincy Jones' autobiography and in 1998 he starred in Warren Beatty's film Bulworth . In 2001 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters . In 2002 he was named Poet Laureate by the State of New Jersey - an award he had to give up in 2003 after a controversy over his poem "Somebody Blew Up America" ​​arose. Some lines have been interpreted to mean that Baraka alleges that Israel was behind the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 . In 2010, his book Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music received the American Book Award. One of his sons, Ras J. Baraka , has been Mayor of Newark since July 1, 2014, while Amiri "Middy" Baraka, Jr. has another son as its chief of staff.

Works

  • Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note , Totem Press, New York 1961. Poems
  • Blues People: Negro Music in White America , W. Morrow & Co. New York 1963
    • Blues people; Blacks and their music in white America , Joseph Melzer Verlag , Darmstadt 1969
    • Excerpt from: März-Texte 1 and Trivialmythen, Area, Erftstadt 2004, p. 98ff. March texts 1 first March, 1969.
  • The Dead Lecturer , Grove Press, New York, 1964. Poems
  • Dutchman and The Slave; Two Plays , W. Morrow & Co., 1964. Plays
  • The System of Dante's Hell; a Novel , Grove Press, New York 1965
    • Dante's System of Hell; Roman , Joseph Melzer Verlag, Darmstadt 1966
  • (Cuba Libre from) Home; Social Essays , William Morrow & Co., 1965
    • (Cuba Libre.) Way out of hatred: From Liberalism to Black Power , Joseph Melzer, Darmstadt, 1966
  • Tales , Grove Press 1967
  • Black Music , W. Morrow & Co, New York 1967
  • The Baptism & The Toilet , Grove Press, New York 1967
    • Slowly downhill; Stories , Joseph Melzer, Darmstadt 1968 [ Going Down Slow appeared in the Evergreen Review ]
  • Black Magic, Sabotage, Target Study, Black Art; Collected Poetry, 1961-1967 , Bobbs Merrill, Indianapolis 1969
  • Four Black Revolutionary Plays; All Praise to the Black Man , Bobbs Merrill, Indianapolis, 1969
    • Dutchman , Faber, 1969
    • Dutchman , S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1970?
  • It's Nation Time , Third World Press, Chicago, 1970. Poems.
  • Raise Race Rays Raize: Essays Since 1965 , Random House, 1971
  • Hard Facts , Poems, 1975
  • The Motion of History and Other Plays , 1978
  • Poetry for the Advanced , 1979
  • reggae or not! , 1981
  • Daggers and Javelins: Essays 1974-1979 , 1984
  • The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones / Amiri Baraka , 1984
  • The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues , 1987
  • Transbluesency: The Selected Poems of Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones , 1995
  • Wise, Why's Y’s , 1995. Essays.
  • Funk Lore: New Poems , 1996.
  • Somebody Blew Up America , 2001
  • Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music , 2010

Discography

  • Black Dada Nihilism ( DJ Spooky remix) on: Offbeat: A Red Hot Soundtrip (1996; produced by David Byrne , DJ Krush and others)
  • Artra / Amiri Baraka Live in Munich Artra003
  • "Black Dada Nihilism" New York Art Quartet and Leroi Jones.

literature

  • Hans Finger: Leroi Jones Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note. In: Klaus Lubbers (Ed.): The American Poetry - From Colonial Times to the Present . Bagel Verlag, Düsseldorf 1974, ISBN 3-513-02215-8 , pp. 386-393.

Web links

Commons : Amiri Baraka  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Amiri Baraka, former NJ poet laureate and prolific author, dead at 79 Obituary in The Star-Ledger , January 9, 2014
  2. ↑ Hettie Jones: How I Became Hettie Jones . EP Dutton, New York 1990.
  3. ^ Franz Link: LeRoi Jones, b. 1934 . In: Franz Link: American storytellers since 1950 · Topics · Contents · Forms . Schöningh, Paderborn 1993, ISBN 3-506-70822-8 , pp. 199-204, here pp. 199 f. The quote is taken from this source.
  4. ↑ Members: Amiri Baraka. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 14, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Baraka, Amiri
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jones, LeRoi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American lyricist, playwright, music critic, and prose writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 7, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Newark , New Jersey , USA
DATE OF DEATH January 9, 2014
Place of death Newark (New Jersey)