Amiri Baraka, Leroi Jones, David Murray, Steve McCall

A seamless blend of the avant jazz of David Murray (sax) and Steve McCall (drums) with the powerful prose and cadence of Amiri Baraka! This first ever reissue of poet and social/political activist Amiri Baraka’s electric live 1982 beat poetry reading is newly remastered and includes a zine-style poetry insert and liner notes by David Murray! 

“The poetry I want to write is oral by tradition, mass aimed as its fundamental functional motive. Black poetry, in its mainstream, is oracular, sermonic, it incorporates the screams and shouts and moans and wails of the people inside and outside of the churches. The whispers and thunder vibrato and staccato of the inside and the outside of the people themselves and it wants to be as real as anything else and as accessible as a song - a song about a real world, full of good and evil.

The music is also Afro-American, as are the players and the poet. But the music has borrowed from whatever in the world interested it, but it is still itself. David Murray and Steve McCall are fine artists of Afro-American contemporary music. It is a music whose African origins are expanded by its American experience, like the people. It has come from Work song and Spiritual, and blues is its common personal speech. 

Together, they are the tremendous wings for the poetry/music flight heard here. We wanted the music and words to extend each other, be parts of the same expression, different pieces of a whole. And the work to produce this product seemed effortless - it was a pleasure, a beautiful experience.” – Amiri Baraka