Amiri Baraka: Founder of The Black Arts Movement (1960s) – Happy Birthday!

Posted on 07. Oct, 2009 by Leshell Hatley in Faculty, I'm a Full Professor!, Scholarly Celebrations

Amiri Baraka, born in 1934, in Newark, New Jersey, USA, is the author of over 40 books of essays, poems, drama, and music history and criticism, 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 orishas such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, and Sun Ra 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 that became, though short-lived, the virtual blueprint for a new American theater aesthetics. The movement and his published and performance work, such as the signature study on African-American music, Blues People (1963) and the play Dutchman (1963) practically seeded “the cultural corollary to black nationalism” of that revolutionary American milieu.

Baraka studied philosophy and religious studies at Rutgers University, Columbia University, and Howard University without obtaining a degree. In 1954 he joined the US Air Force<, reaching the rank of sergeant. After an anonymous letter to his commanding officer accusing him of being a communist led to the discovery of Soviet writings, Baraka was put on kitchen duty and given a dishonorable discharge for violation of his oath of duty. The same year he moved to Greenwich Village working initially in a warehouse for music records. His interest in jazz began in this period. At the same time he came into contact with the incipient movement of Beat Poets that was going to have a powerful influence on his early poetry. In 1958, Jones founded Totem Press, which published such Beat icons as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. The same year he married Hettie Cohen and with her became joint editor of the Yugen literary magazine (until 1963).

In 1960 he went to Cuba, a visit that initiated his transformation into a politically active artist. In 1961 Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note was published, followed in 1963 by Blues People: Negro Music in White America – to this day one of the most influential volumes of jazz criticism, especially in regard to the then beginning Free Jazz movement. His acclaimed controversial play Dutchman premiered in 1964 and received an Obie Award the same year. After the assassination of Malcolm X, Baraka broke free from the Beat Poets. He left his wife and their two children and moved to Harlem, considering himself at that time a black cultural nationalist. Hettie Jones’s autobiography How I Became Hettie Jones, was published in 1990. In 1984 Baraka became a full professor at Rutgers University, but was subsequently denied tenure. In 1987, together with Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, he was a speaker at the commemoration ceremony for James Baldwin. In 1989 he won an American Book Award for his works as well as a Langston Hughes Award. In 1990 he co-authored the autobiography of Quincy Jones, and 1998 was a supporting actor in Warren Beatty’s film Bulworth. Baraka also collaborated with hip hop group The Roots on the song “Something in the Way of Things (In Town)” on their 2002 album Phrenology.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Amiri Baraka on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. His awards and honors include an Obie, the American Academy of Arts & Letters award, the James Weldon Johnson Medal for contributions to the arts, Rockefeller Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts grants, Professor Emeritus at the State university of New York at Stony Brook, and the Poet Laureate of New Jersey.

-Taken from Wikipedia and http://www.amiribaraka.com. Visit these sites for more information and media.

More Related posts:

1. Toni Morrison: Novelist, Pulitzer & Nobel Prize for Literature Winner
2. The Black Scholar: Journal of Black Studies and Research
3. Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. – Happy Founders Day
4. Dr. Eileen Southern: Black Music Scholar and First Black Full Professor at Harvard
5. Ruth Simmons: 1st Black President of an Ivy League School

Tags: 100 Greatest African Americans, 1960s, actor, American Book Award, Amiri Baraka, Author, Black Arts Movement, Forbes Magazine, Head of the UCLA Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program, James Baldwin, James Weldon Johnson Medal, Kennedy Space Center, Langston Hughes Award, Leroi jones, Malcolm X, Maya Angelou, Molefi Kete Asante, musician, National Endowment for the Arts, National Urban League, poet, Poet Laureate of New Jersey, political activist, Professor Emeritus State University of New York at Stony Brook, Regina Benjamin, Rockefeller Foundation, Scholar, Toni Morrison, Unbought & Unbossed, Yugen literary magazine