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NYU Honors and Celebrates the Life of Poets Jayne Cortez and Amiri Baraka


Amiri Baraka Obituary

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AMIRI BARAKA OBITUARY

10/7/1934 - 1/9/2014| 
Amiri Baraka (AP Photo/Mike Derer, File)
Amiri Baraka (AP Photo/Mike Derer, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Amiri Baraka, the militant man of letters and tireless agitator whose blues-based, fist-shaking poems, plays and criticism made him a provocative and groundbreaking force in American culture, has died. He was 79.

His booking agent, Celeste Bateman, told The Associated Press that Baraka, who had been hospitalized since last month, died Thursday at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center.

Perhaps no writer of the 1960s and '70s was more radical or polarizing than the former LeRoi Jones, and no one did more to extend the political debates of the civil rights era to the world of the arts. He inspired at least one generation of poets, playwrights and musicians, and his immersion in spoken word traditions and raw street language anticipated rap, hip-hop and slam poetry. The FBI feared him to the point of flattery, identifying Baraka as "the person who will probably emerge as the leader of the Pan-African movement in the United States."

Baraka transformed from the rare black to join the Beat caravan of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac to leader of the Black Arts Movement, an ally of the Black Power movement that rejected the liberal optimism of the early '60s and intensified a divide over how and whether the black artist should take on social issues. Scorning art for art's sake and the pursuit of black-white unity, Barak was part of a philosophy that called for the teaching of black art and history and producing works that bluntly called for revolution.

"We want 'poems that kill,'" Baraka wrote in his landmark "Black Art," a manifesto published in 1965, the year he helped found the Black Arts Movement. "Assassin poems. Poems that shoot guns/Poems that wrestle cops into alleys/and take their weapons leaving them dead/with tongues pulled out and sent to Ireland."

He was as eclectic as he was prolific: His influences ranged from Ray Bradbury and Mao Zedong to Ginsberg and John Coltrane. Baraka wrote poems, short stories, novels, essays, plays, musical and cultural criticism and jazz operas. His 1963 book "Blues People" has been called the first major history of black music to be written by an African-American. A line from his poem "Black People!"— "Up against the wall mother f-----"— became a counterculture slogan for everyone from student protesters to the rock band Jefferson Airplane. A 2002 poem he wrote alleging that some Israelis had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks led to widespread outrage.

Decades earlier, Baraka had declared himself a black nationalist out to "break the deathly grip of the White Eyes," then a Marxist-Leninist out to destroy imperialists of all colors. No matter his name or ideology, he was committed to "struggle, change, struggle, unity, change, movement."

"All of the oaths I swore were sincere reflections of what I felt — what I thought I knew and understood," he wrote in a 1990 essay. "But those beliefs change, and the work shows this, too."

He was denounced by critics as buffoonish, homophobic, anti-Semitic, a demagogue. He was called by others a genius, a prophet, the Malcolm X of literature. Eldridge Cleaver hailed him as the bard of the "funky facts." Ishmael Reed credited the Black Arts Movement for encouraging artists of all backgrounds and enabling the rise of multiculturalism. The scholar Arnold Rampersad placed him alongside Frederick Douglass and Richard Wright in the pantheon of black cultural influences.

First published in the 1950s, Baraka crashed the literary party in 1964, at the Cherry Lane Theater in Greenwich Village, when "Dutchman" opened and made instant history at the height of the civil rights movement. Baraka's play was a one-act showdown between a middle class black man, Clay, and a sexually daring white woman, Lula, ending in a brawl of murderous taunts and confessions.

Baraka was born Everett LeRoy Jones, in 1934, a postal worker's son who grew up in a racially mixed neighborhood in Newark and remembered his family's passion for songs and storytelling. He showed early talents for sports and music and did well enough in high school to graduate with honors and receive a scholarship from Rutgers University.

Feeling out of place at Rutgers, he transferred to a leading black college, Howard University. He hated it there ("Howard University shocked me into realizing how desperately sick the Negro could be," he later wrote) and joined the Air Force, from which he was discharged for having too many books, among other transgressions. By 1958, he had settled in Greenwich Village, met Ginsberg and other Beats, married fellow writer Cohen and was editing an avant-garde journal, Yugen. He called himself LeRoi Jones.

He was never meant to write like other writers. In his "Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka," published in 1984, he remembered himself as a young man, sitting on a bench, reading "one of the carefully put together exercises The New Yorker publishes constantly as high poetic art."

And he was in tears.

"I realized that there was something in me so out, so unconnected with what this writer was and what this magazine was that what was in me that wanted to come out as poetry would never come out like that and be my poetry," he wrote.

Baraka divorced Cohen in 1965 and a year later married Sylvia Robinson, whose name became Bibi Amina Baraka. He had seven children, two with his first wife and five with his second. A son, Ras Baraka, became a councilman in Newark. A daughter, Shani Baraka, was murdered in 2003 by the estranged husband of her sister, Wanda Pasha.

Amiri Baraka taught at Yale University and George Washington University and spent 20 years on the faculty of the State University of New York in Stonybrook. He received numerous grants and prizes, including a Guggenheim fellowship and a poetry award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Baraka was the subject of a 1983 documentary, "In Motion," and holds a minor place in Hollywood history. In "Bulworth," Warren Beatty's 1998 satire about a senator's break from the political establishment, Baraka plays a homeless poet who cheers on the title character.

"You got to be a spirit," the poet tells him. "You got to sing — don't be no ghost."

HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer
reat:http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.aspx?n=amiri-baraka&pid=168995983#sthash.B6wAsClt.dpuf

Video of Amiri Baraka's Funeral

The Black Arts Movement Conference, University of California, Merced, Feb. 28-March 2, 2014

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A Tribute to Amiri Baraka

October 7, 1934 -- January 9, 2014












Invited Participants

 Dr. Cornel West


 Marvin X and Tarika Lewis

 Ishmael Reed

 Dr. Ayodele Nzinga

 Dr. Nathan Hare

 Judy Juanita 

 Ras Baraka

 Earl Davis

 Benny Stewart

 Eugene Redman

 Sonia Sanchez

 Askia Toure

 Ptah Allah El


Producer Kim McMillan


Co-Producer Marvin X


Negro es Bello (Black is Beautiful) by Elizabeth Catlett Mora








Marvin X speaks at the funeral of AB, his partner in rhymes and other crimes

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"I came to represent the West Coast! I'm from Oakland. Newark, NJ reminds me of Oakland, e.g., Market and Broad is like 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland, except there are more Bloods on Market and Broad." He will speak at the NYU tribute  to poets Jayne Cortez and Amiri Baraka on Feb. 4, 6pm. He is available for east coast booking, call 510-200-4164. On the west coast, join him at the Black Arts Movement Conference, University of California, Merced, Feb 28-March 2, 2014. His central valley tour includes engagements at the Hinton Center, Feb. 22 and Fresno City College, Feb 24.



AB, Godfather of BAM


Living Black History: Marvin X Speaks in Fresno at the Hinton Center

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Marvin X will also speak at Fresno City College, February 24, 10AM, sponsored by the Black Studies Department. He will dialogue with Kehindi Solwazi, Professor Emeritus at FCC.

He is co-producer with Kim McMillan of the Black Arts Movement Conference at University of California, Merced, Feb 28-March 2, 2014.






East coast people can catch him at New York University, Feb. 4, 6pm, at the tribute for poets Jayne Cortez and Amiri Baraka.








Marvin X, a founding figure of the 1960s flowering of the Black Arts Movement in the U.S., believes the struggle for justice worldwide is one. He joins his powerful voice to the International Solidarity Hunger Strike for Syria--and links it to his strong ongoing activism against genocide and fratricide in the 'hoods of America. Marvin's son of blessed memory was once held and interrogated by the Syrian dictatorship's state security agents, as he has written about eloquently on his blog, Black Bird Press News, named after one of Marvin's early plays that was produced in community theaters across the U.S. during the 1970s. Not one to be fooled by the police state's claims of "anti-imperialism" nor to give it a pass for oppression based on such claims, Marvin has been with us from the start. #GRATITUDE

Photo: Thanks to the organizers of Day of Solidarity with Syria - global demonstrations on Saturday, January 11. London, Dublin and Malmo, Sweden will also have groups doing a Solidarity Hunger Strike on that day. Check out their info and attend the demonstration in your area. There are demonstrations in Syria; Vienna, Austria; Milano, Como Genova, Bologna, Ancona, Roma, Napoli, Palermo, and Lecce in Italy; Munich Stuttgart, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Aachen, Cologne, Hamburg, Dortmund in Germany; Helsinki, Finland; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Barcelona, Granada and Seville in Spain; Paris and Montpelier in France; Montreal in Canada; Mexico City in Mexico; Nairobi in Kenya; Warsaw in Poland; Cairo in Egypt; Antwerp in Belgium; Lausanne in Switzerland; Buenos Aires in Argentina; Los Angeles and Washington in the U.S. https://www.facebook.com/solidaysyria

Thanks to the organizers of Day of Solidarity with Syria - global demonstrations on Saturday, January 11. London, Dublin and Malmo, Sweden will also have groups doing a Solidarity Hunger Strike on that day. Check out their info and attend the demonstration in your area. There are demonstrations in Syria; Vienna, Austria; Milano, Como Genova, Bologna, Ancona, Roma, Napoli, Palermo, and Lecce in It...aly; Munich Stuttgart, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Aachen, Cologne, Hamburg, Dortmund in Germany; Helsinki, Finland; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Barcelona, Granada and Seville in Spain; Paris and Montpelier in France; Montreal in Canada; Mexico City in Mexico; Nairobi in Kenya; Warsaw in Poland; Cairo in Egypt; Antwerp in Belgium; Lausanne in Switzerland; Buenos Aires in Argentina; Los Angeles and Washington in the U.S. https://www.facebook.com/solidaysyriaSee More
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com



Two Poems for the People of Syria by Marvin X and Mohja Kahf




Oh, Mohja
how much water can run from rivers to sea
how much blood can soak the earth
the guns of tyrants know no end
a people awakened are bigger than bullets
there is no sleep in their eyes
no more stunted backs and fear of broken limbs
even men, women and children are humble with sacrifice
the old the young play their roles
with smiles they endure torture chambers
with laughs they submit to rape and mutilations
there is no victory for oppressors
whose days are numbered
as the clock ticks as the sun rises
let the people continue til victory
surely they smell it on their hands
taste it on lips
believe it in their hearts
know it in their minds
no more backwardness no fear
let there be resistance til victory.
--Marvin X/El Muhajir



Syrian poet/professor Dr. Mohja Kahf



Oh Marvin, how much blood can soak the earth?

The angels asked, “will you create a species who will shed blood

and overrun the earth with evil?” 

And it turns out “rivers of blood” is no metaphor: 


see the stones of narrow alleys in Duma

shiny with blood hissing from humans? Dark

and dazzling, it keeps pouring and pumping

from the inexhaustible soft flesh of Syrians,

and neither regime cluster bombs from the air,

nor rebel car bombs on the ground,

ask them their names before they die. 

They are mowed down like wheat harvested by machine,

and every stalk has seven ears, and every ear a hundred grains.

They bleed like irrigation canals into the earth.

Even one little girl in Idlib with a carotid artery cut

becomes a river of blood. Who knew she could be a river 

running all the way over the ocean, to you,

draining me of my heart? And God said to the angels, 

“I know what you know not.” But right now,
the angels seem right. Cut the coyness, God;

learn the names of all the Syrians.

See what your species has done.

--Mohja Kahf                     

Marvin X Poem fa da Hood


Memorial Day, 2007
I am a veteran
Not of foreign battlefields
Like my father in world war one
My uncles in world war two
And Korea
Or my friends from Vietnam
And even the Congo “police action”
But veteran none the less
Exiled and jailed because I refused
To visit Vietnam as a running dog for imperialism
So I visited Canada, Mexico and Belize
Then Federal prison for a minute
But veteran I am of the war in the hood
The war of domestic colonialism and neo-colonialism
White supremacy in black face war
Fighting for black power that turned white
Or was always white as in the other white people
So war it was and is
Every day without end no RR no respite just war
For colors like kindergarten children war
For turf warriors don’t own and run when popo comes
War for drugs and guns and women
War for hatred jealousy
Dante got a scholarship but couldn’t get on the plane
The boyz in the hood met him on the block and jacked him
Relieved him of his gear shot him in the head because he could read
Play basketball had all the pretty girls a square
The boyz wanted him dead like themselves
Wanted him to have a shrine with liquor bottles and teddy bears
And candles
Wanted his mama and daddy to weep and mourn at the funeral
Like all the other moms and dads and uncle aunts cousins
Why should he make it out the war zone
The blood and broken bones of war in the hood
No veterans day no benefits no mental health sessions
No conversation who cares who wants to know about the dead
In the hood
the warriors gone down in the ghetto night
We heard the Uzi at 3am and saw the body on the steps until 3 pm
When the coroner finally arrived as children passed from school
I am the veteran of ghetto wars of liberation that were aborted
And morphed into wars of self destruction
With drugs supplied from police vans
Guns diverted from the army base and sold 24/7 behind the Arab store.
Junior is 14 but the main arms merchant in the hood
He sells guns from his backpack
His daddy wants to know how he get all them guns
But Junior don’t tell cause he warrior
He’s lost more friends than I the elder
What can I tell him about death and blood and bones
He says he will get rich or die trying
But life is for love not money
And if he lives he will learn.
If he makes it out the war zone to another world
Where they murder in suits and suites
And golf courses and yachts
if he makes it even beyond this world
He will learn that love is better than money
For he was once on the auction block and sold as a thing
For money, yes, for the love of money but not for love
And so his memory is short and absent of truth
The war in the hood has tricked him into the slave past
Like a programmed monkey he acts out the slave auction
The sale of himself on the corner with his homeys
Trying to pose cool in the war zone
I will tell him the truth and maybe one day it will hit him like a bullet
In the head
It will hit him multiple times in the brain until he awakens to the real battle
In the turf of his mind.
And he will stand tall and deliver himself to the altar of truth to be a witness
Along with his homeys
They will take charge of their posts
They will indeed claim their turf and it will be theirs forever
Not for a moment in the night
But in the day and in the tomorrows
And the war will be over
No more sorrow no more blood and bones
No more shrines on the corner with liquor bottles teddy bears and candles.

--Marvin X
25 May 2007
Brooklyn NY


Memorial Day appears in the anthology Stand Our Ground, for Trayvon Martin and Melissa Alexander.


Marvin X tour dates 2014

Marvin X  reads at New York University on February 4, 2014, at a tribute for poet Jayne Cortez.
February 22 he will read at the Hinton Center, Fresno CA.
February 24 he will read at Fresno City College
February 28, March 1-2, he will co-produce (with Kim McMillan) the Black Arts Movement Conference, University of California, Merced.

For more information or to invite Marvin X to your campus and/or conference, call 510-200-4164.
Send letter of invitation to jmarvinx@yahoo.com.

Black Bird Press News & Review: A Marvin X poem for Miles Davis in Montreal - Time After Time

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Black Bird Press News & Review: A Marvin X poem for Miles Davis in Montreal - Time After Time:



A Marvin X poem for Miles Davis in Montreal - Time After Time



And time is all we have
together
a moment or two
do not waste time
you will look back to wonder
what happened to time
who ate time
some big ugly monster
illusions filling the night air
something we missed in conversation
"That is not what I meant
That is not what I meant at all" (TSE)
and before you know it
time has slipped away
lovers have gone
children grown
you sit alone
no matter
life is wonderful
live like Sade said
every day is xmas
every night New Year's eve.
--Marvin X
12/8/13

Black Bird Press News & Review: WURD Speaks: Black Power Babies

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Black Power Babies is a production of Muhammida El Muhajir, daughter of Marvin X and Nisa Ra.
On stage with her is Mrs. Amina Baraka, Amiri Baraka, Jr., Marvin X and Bumi, with her mother, founder  of the Odunde Fest in Philly.
WURD radio sponsored this event. 

From the concert In the Crazy House, African American Cultural Center, San Francisco

Marvin X Reads Poetry at the Brecht Forum with Ras Moshe

RBG| WHITE SUPREMACY 2 -In A Crazy House Called America- Marvin X

VTS 01 1 Marvin X presents black women reading at Joyce Gordon Art Gallery

Marvin X Tribute sponsored by The Oakland Post show #1a

Berkeley Black History Month Celebration

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Having successfully produced twenty-seven Juneteenth Festivals, Berkeley Juneteenth Association, Inc. (BJAI) will expand its reach by hosting the First Annual Black History Month Celebration in Berkeley on Saturday, February 8, 2014 from 1:00-6:00pm at the Berkeley Community Theater.
Admission is free and open to the public.
The theme is HARAMBEE! A COMMUNITY COMING TOGETHER: AFRICAN, THEN AMERICAN. The music of artists Kev Choice, Zulu Spear, Afrofunk Experience, and Akayaa Atule will be woven into the edu-tainment musical which will include poetry, drums, song, dance, video, and narrative. Berkeley filmmaker Doug Harris will present an excerpt from his current documentary film entitled FAIR LEGISLATION: The Byron Rumford Story, about Northern California's first Black Assemblyman from Berkeley. The film presentation will take a close look at Berkeley's Black history from a socio-economic and political perspective. Some of the documentary's cast include: Elihu Harris (former assemblyman and Oakland mayor), Belva Davis (news reporter and political journalist), Jerri Lange (television host and author), and William Rumford Jr. (Byron Rumford's son), all of who grew up in Berkeley. Berkeley civic icons will also be honored with civil rights awards.
Programming at the First Annual Black History Month event is a collaboration with the following organizations: Berkeley NAACP; Berkeley High School -African American Studies Department; Peace & Justice Commission; Parents of Children of African Descent(PCAD), and Berkeley Unified School District. Event sponsors are the City of Berkeley and Cooperative Center Federal Credit Union.
BJAI was established in 1986 for the purpose of celebrating Juneteenth in Berkeley and "to promote greater societal growth and community cohesiveness in the City of Berkeley and surrounding environs through educating and involving people of color in historical, family, economic business, and cultural activities.” With the addition of Black History Month, BJAI will now host two yearly events in February and in June. This year’s 28th annual Berkeley Juneteenth Festival will be held on Sunday June 15, 2014.
For more information about the Black History Month Celebration or the Berkeley Juneteenth Festival

CONTACT: DELORES NOCHI COOPER 510-717-4020 denocoo@aol.com or
           ANGELA CLEO SMITH 510-927-7511 angcleo2003@gmail.com


Amiri Baraka in conversation with Marvin X at the Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico

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Amiri Baraka with Marvin X, 11 March 2009 – Audio


Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on March 11, 2009.
Amiri Baraka (left) read from his work and joined in conversation with Marvin X at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Wednesday, March 11, 2009. Photo: Don Usner
Amiri Baraka, (née Everett LeRoi Jones) author of over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, is a poet icon and revolutionary political activist who has recited poetry and lectured on cultural and political issues extensively in the USA, the Caribbean, Africa, and Europe. With influences on his work ranging from musical artists such as John Coltrane and Thelonius Monk, to the Cuban Revolution, Malcolm X, and world revolutionary movements, Baraka is renowned as the founder of the Black Arts Movement in Harlem in the 1960s. His recent books include Somebody Blew Up America and Other Poems and Tales of the Out & The Gone.
Marvin X (nee Marvin Ellis Jackmon) is a poet, playwright, essayist, educator, activist and one of the founders of the Black Arts Movement. He established Black Arts West Theatre, San Francisco, 1966 and worked at the New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, NY, 1968. He is the author of 30 books of poems, essays, parables and proverbs. His recent books include The Wisdom of Plato Negro, How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy and Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality.
You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website.
Length: 1:20:25; Size: 27.7 MB

Marvin X speaks on the Mythology of Pussy and Dick at the Philadelphia International Locks Conference

Marvin X on freedom or discipline, the mind or the behind!

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Marvin X is interviewed by young journalist Penjarvis Harshaw at Marvin's

Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. Ishmael Reed says

Marvin X is Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland. Ase!

Marvin X on Wall Street Part 1 WBAI Interview

Marvin X on Wall Street Part 2 WBAI Interview

Marvin X on Wall Street, reading poem Nigguh Wanna Pimp

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