Author: Amiri Baraka

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 0520265823

"As a commentator on American music, and African American music in particular, Baraka occupies a unique niche. His intelligence, critical sense, passion, strong political stances, involvement with musicians and in the musical world, as well as in his community, give his work a quality unlike any other. As a reviewer and as someone inside the movement, he writes powerfully about music as few others can or do."—Steven L. Isoardi, author of Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles "Every jazz musician who has endured beyond changing fashions and warring cultures has had a signature sound. Amiri Baraka—from the very beginning of his challenging, fiery presence on the jazz scene—has brought probing light, between his off-putting thunderclaps, on what is indeed America's classical music. I sometimes disagree insistently with Amiri, and it's mutual; but when he gets past his parochial pyrotechnics, as in choruses in this book, he brings you into the life force of this music."—Nat Hentoff, author of The Jazz Life