Amiri Baraka - Poet Laureate of New Jersey

Amiri Baraka

" Amiri Baraka (born Everett LeRoi Jones; October 7, 1934 – January 9, 2014), formerly known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka.
He was an African-American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, music criticism  and an activist. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at a number of universities, including the State University of New York at Buffalo and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He received the PEN Open Book Award, formerly known as the Beyond Margins Award, in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone. Some compare him to James Baldwin and call Baraka one of the most respected and most widely published Black writers of his generation. Others have said his work is an expression of violence, misogyny, homophobia and racism.
 Baraka's brief official tenure as Poet Laureate of New Jersey (2002–03), involved controversy over a public reading of his poem "Somebody Blew Up America?" and accusations of anti-semitism, and some negative attention from critics, and politicians." - Wikipedia

Wise I - by Amiri Baraka


     WHYS (Nobody Knows
     The Trouble I Seen)
     Traditional

If you ever find
yourself, some where
lost and surrounded
by enemies
who won't let you
speak in your own language
who destroy your statues
& instruments, who ban
your omm bomm ba boom
then you are in trouble
deep trouble
they ban your
own boom ba boom
you in deep deep
trouble


humph!


probably take you several hundred years
to get
out!

Jazz Poetry by Langston Hughes

- The Weary Blues



Jazz poetry
It was with the advent of the Harlem Renaissance that jazz poetry developed into what it is today.

Poets like Langston Hughes incorporated the syncopated rhythms and repetitive phrases of blues and jazz music into their writing. Many Harlem Renaissance writers were deeply concerned with racial pride and with the creation of purely African-American poetry. Since jazz music was an important part of African-American culture at the time, Hughes and others like him adapted the musical genre to create their own, singularly African-American voices that could easily be distinguished from the work of white poets. Many of Hughes' poems, such as "The Weary Blues," sound almost exactly like popular jazz and blues songs of the period, and vice versa. His work is also highly evocative of spirituals.

A selection of Poetry by "Angela Jackson"

Maya Angelou :

born Marguerite Ann Johnson; April 4, 1928)

Maya and Malcolm

"She became a poet and writer after a series of occupations as a young adult, including fry cook, prostitute, night-club dancer and performer, castmember of the opera Porgy and Bess, coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the days of decolonization. She has also been an actor, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. Since 1982, she has taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she holds the first lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies. She was active in the Civil Rights movement, and worked with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X. Since the 1990s she has made around eighty appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton's inauguration, the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961." -wikipedia

American Black Women in History

Poetry of 5 African American Women on Straight Up!
out of Brooklyn Part 1







BLACK WOMEN COMPOSERS IN CLASSICAL MUSIC:
 "TOO MANY SONGS UN-SUNG"

Black Women Composers African American Art Songs

• Dorothy Rudd Moore
• Undine Smith Moore
• Gerald Blanchard
• Margaret Bonds
• Daphney Lindsay
• Florence Price

A web site featuring African American Women Artists
The Cora Marshall Online Gallery

Faith Ringold





Some women of the Harlem Renaissance






Gwendolyn Bennett (1902-1981)
To A Dark Girl


Marita Bonner (1898-1971)

Georgette Seabrooke-Powell


Angelina Weld Grimke (1880-1958)
You


Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960)


Nella Larsen (1891 -1964)


Jessie Redmon Fauset (1884-1961)


Mary White Ovington (1865-1951)


Anne Spencer (1882-1975)
Click for youtube presentation.

Dorothy West (1907-1998)


Dedicated to the African American Woman