Blues People - LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka)

 

I first came across LeRoi Jones in my pocket poet edition of the Beat poets which I bought in 1973, which contains his poem Way Out West which he wrote for Gary Snyder. So he’s always been in my consciousness as one of the ‘Beats’. In that poem he refers to Nat King Cole underlining his appreciation and understanding of the importance of music within the common consciousness. Criticised for communism, anti Semitism and homophobia during his lifetime Jones remained outspoken regarding his beliefs. So I was intrigued when Canongate Books offered me the opportunity for a gifted copy of ‘Blues People’ republished this year.

‘ The middle-class black man bases his whole existence on the hopeless hypothesis that no one is supposed to remember that for almost three centuries there was slavery in America, that the white man was the master and the black man the slave. This knowledge, however, is at the root of the legitimate black culture of this country. It is this knowledge, with its attendant muses of self-division, self-hatred, stoicism, and finally quixotic optimism, but informs the most meaningful of Afro-American music.‘ 

LeRoi Jones seminal work on ‘Negro music in white America’ is an erudite and intellectual consideration of the development of blues and jazz. But it is also a condensed and passionate history of African Americans from the early days of that living genocide, known as slavery, through to 60’s America. This updated version contains a introduction by Jones, (who changed his name in 1965 to Amiri Baraka) in 1999. 

It’s a powerful work that also exists as a sociocultural history of a people but intertwined with the development of some niche genres of music. Music has always been unifying force at numerous levels. It can express, as most art forms can, the most intense feelings and passions. 

‘What was so powerful and desperate in this music that guaranteed its continued existence? The music was an orchestrated, vocalised, hummed, chanted, blown, beaten, scatted, corollary confirmation of the history’

Blues, jazz, soul, R&B are all dissected within this deceptively slender volume. It’s a book that will assist any attempt to learn and understand about the history of black America. And it’s almost as if the music is the tool with which that history is being told and unfolded. It’s a substantial piece of work that seeks to analyse in depth without bias towards any one musician or genre. It allows the reader a detailed overview of blues and jazz which is fascinating. But it also offers the reader food for thought that is particularly pertinent within the context of #BlackLivesMatter in our contemporary world.

My thanks to Canongate Books for my copy.