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Books by Kalamu ya
Salaam
The Magic of JuJu: An Appreciation of the Black Arts
Movement /
360:
A Revolution of Black Poets
Everywhere Is Someplace Else: A Literary Anthology
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From A Bend in the River: 100 New Orleans Poets
Our Music Is No Accident /
What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self
My Story My Song (CD)
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five.
a decade of development
(contd.)
Ibura
(something special)
By
late 1975 with two strong years of organizing and operating our
programs under our belt, Ahidiana began to move seriously on
dealing with radicalizing our position on the woman's question.
The next book came out early in 1976. Ibura (Swahili for
"something special, miraculous or wonderful" and also
our third child's middle name) was dedicated to my mother who
had passed on 5 October 1975. The whole book was about women.
In
addition to the poems, Ibura contained two short stories,
one of which was later published in We Be Word Sorcerers,
an anthology edited by Sonia Sanchez. This would be the last
time for fiction for a good stretch.
There
are two poems in this collection which have particular meaning
for me: "TOP 40" and "IBURA/COME GET TO
THIS".
"TOP
40" was written for Maxine Maye, a good friend of mine who
lives in Washington, DC and who was a stalwart in the
independent Black school movement. "TOP 40"
demonstrates one of the techniques I frequently employed: I used
the experiences of close friends as both a sign of how deeply I
appreciated them as individuals and also to create poems which
addressed lessons to our community at large. Almost all of my
work, regardless of theme or content, draws on real lives
(myself, my friends, our community, the world) for details.
Sometimes its as minute as using a color as an image because a
friend might wear that color often. In any case, "TOP
40" was a very popular poem at readings. It opens with a
cataloging of pain:
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babies,
no babies
children,
single & multiple
employment,
exploitation
scar
tissue and wounds
anger,
hurt, disappointments
...
weary,
certainly, of the centuries
of
the necessary but nonetheless crippling
and
often unacknowledged work of forced soloing,
sometimes
seemingly single handedly
having
to handle the process
of
propagating and preserving
our
subjugated race, our
wounded
pride and indeed, our
historically
tested humanness
you
are, i'm sure, tired
of
being cursed and accused
for
the umpteenth million time
of
being damn aggressive
when
not aggressive but human,
female
and Black in a time
callous
& cruelly hard on such a combination
and
too, terribly tired of taking shit
and
knowingly pretending it's sugar
. . .
don't
let her be misunderstood
* * * *
* |
This
was a three part poem based on a classic country blues form of
AAB, i.e. make a statement, repeat the statement perhaps
slightly paraphrased or altered, and then conclude with a
statement that commented on the opening two statements. In part
two we amplified the opening.
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babies,
no babies
house,
apartment, bus
stop,
street corner, car
man,
husband, lover
(scarcely
ever three in one)
and
still seldom someone there
who
actually understands
or
even consciously tries to
the
continuous struggle,
what
to do,
supporting
the dead weight
of
unconscious brothers,
those
bad black bodies pressing down
upon
your breasts, but betrayals
notwithstanding,
true to who you
actually
are, you move on
giving
sex, or giving money, or giving love,
or
attention and indeed, giving your whole
aching
life, giving that
taking
that, not taking that
but
moving on, liking life
hating
it, wishing
you
were dead, or joy
so
in love, yet always
always
moving on
Black
woman, black woman
i
hear you
i
see you *
* * * * |
Then
the third part which sharply contrasted with, but did not
contradict, the two part litany of realities faced by women.
What I was trying to empathize with the real situation faced by
women, and especially by single women such as my friend Maxine.
Musically, this particular poem has an analog in Bill Whither's
exquisite song, "But She's Lonely," even though I
actually refer to an Al Green song.
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III.
. . . at a window, looking out
and
looking in and just sitting sometimes,
stopped for a short moment
for
a fast minute
just
momentarily resting, catching breath
just,
just basically reflecting
on
the conditions of our collective existence,
cognizant
and courageously critical of
the
serious realities of our struggle,
unsurrendering,
your voice is absolutely
bittersweet
but strikingly strong as you
sing
silently softly along
with
the top 40 song drifting
pervasively
around the solitary sunlit room,
from
the radio...
"...i'm
so tired of being alone,
i'm
so tired..."
* * * *
* |
Where "TOP 40" had been addressed to the sisters,
"IBURA" was addressed to both sisters and brothers. It
is a "sun song." There is no way that I can help you
hear it except to ask you read it aloud and think of a preacher
in the pulpit. There are numerous musical references in the
poem, some of them obvious ("Billie singing" referring
to Billie Holiday), some of them obscure ("keep our eyes on
the prize of life, hold on, hold on" referring to a freedom
song from my civil rights days). The dedication is to Yvonne
Mason whom I had first met during our civil rights days in the
NAACP Youth Council when she and her younger sister Yvette
joined our picket line. Later in the mid seventies, I would meet
Yvonne when she was working as a typesetter for Edwards Printing
Company, the company that first printed Nkombo.
Ibura
was printed in black ink on a aqua blue paper stock. It had art
work by Orthello Beck, a Dallas, Texas based artist whose work I
came in contact with while I worked at the Black Collegian
Magazine as the editor.
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IBURA/COME
GET TO THIS
(for
Yvonne A. Mason & many, many more)
Many
of our brothers are actually afraid
somehow
of you, feel weak in your presence,
sort
of emasculated by your strength or so they say.
Can
not stand your corrective gaze, find it near impossible
to
move when you are in charge, so they question your
femininity.
But
is it you who should be questioned or we? Are we really
men,
if we can not deal righteously with our women,
our
beautiful black women, who have remained toughly
together
throughout this terrible tumultuous travel
cross
water into new world named america? Our women who
have
never stopped getting up, giving birth and supportive
succulent
sweet satisfying love, never once stopped walking
home,
alone, night after night, carrying big brown bags
full
of clothes and used food to feed us, stolen from day
work,
or
sad hours spent silently suffering degrading labor
in
offices and backrooms for chump under the
lecherous
eyes and hands of capitalist crackers.
Our
women, our women, who, even on pain sometimes of death,
have
never denied loving us. Remember Billie singing
"if
it's one thing that I've got, it's my man and I
love
him so"! Our black women who will wear their hair
anyway
we want it, if only we knew what we really wanted,
our
women, Tubman steady, Sojourner strong, Parks steadfast
Big
Mama wise, young sister sensitive and song singing
soulful.
Our
women from town and country, life to death, something
sure
to
count on, consistent like sun rises, life bringing
life
spring rain falling, our women, beauty catching in the
throat
and
the most nourishing love that a man can have and hold.
Do we
understand
that they, our women, are a guide given to us
to
keep our eyes on the prize of life, hold on, hold on.
What
we need now is a saner society, we need to create a
place
where
life can be lived to the max, enjoyed, improved and made
ultimately
much, much better than when we arrived, we need to free
our
women from all our own twisted anti-female chauvinistic
thoughts
and actions, sad actions, many of which were frosted on
us
by dog lovers, johns and assorted other individuals who,
come
crawling forth from caves with weird ideas about women,
sometimes
refer to themselves as "he-men" as opposed to
their
women
whom they sometimes call she-men which explains partly
how
they really view life. What we need to do is encourage
our
sisters growth, encourage our women to get together and
speak
out, to rush forward and take the lead on social and
political
issues,
to form associations that will organize around their
concerns,
we
need to be there supporting them in each and every way
like we
like
to envision them supporting us. What we expect of them
is the same
as
they need to have come from us. Like we need wives, they
need
husbands,
like we need love, rest and relaxation, they need the
same,
need
what we need, need us like we need them.
* * * *
* |
After Ibura came Revolutionary
Love. Even though Iron Flowers, a short book of
poetry inspired by a trip to Haiti, is the tightest
thematically, I still think Revolutionary Love is the
strongest of all my poetry books from this era. At 114 pages
plus fold out illustrations, Revolutionary Love certainly was
the largest book of poetry I had every published -- it contained
more poems than all of the previous books added together. It is
also the most overtly political even as it had some of the most
"personal" poems I wrote during those years. It
contains the clearest articulation of what we came to mean by
"art for life" a concept posed as an alternative to
"art for art's sake" which we rejected.
While
none of the sun poems in Revolutionary Love are as strong
as "speech" in Pamoja, overall there is a greater
diversity and technically, I achieved some alliterations and
metaphorical reaches that still make me smile whenever I go back
to review Revolutionary Love. Certainly here I have
articulated the Ahidiana philosophy more cogently and with
greater artistic skill then in any other collection of poetry.
In Revolutionary Love the actualization most closely
matches the intent, and the articulation is artistic to the max.
Two of my favorite poems from Revolutionary Love --
actually there are about fifteen or so of the poems in this
collection that are my personal favorites of all of my work from
this period, but we won't bore you with our personal
preferences.
"Personal
preferences" is an inside joke, making reference to a
distinction we used to make in Ahidiana between what we called a
"political point" as opposed to a point of
"personal preference." The collective arrived at and
agreed upon political points, but each individual had a right to
hold points of personal preference. Most of us, of course, would
frequently exercise our rights of personal preference to explain
why we liked or disliked a certain thing, idea, action, person.
This allowed us a way to express disagreement without getting
disagreeable.
Of
all the poetry books, I think Revolutionary Love best
fulfills the promise of The Blues Merchant. There is a
definite diversity of styles in the same way as that first book
of poetry had except that I was by then a much better poet, as
is exemplified by two of the poems.
The
first poem is part of our ongoing struggle to move beyond
race/racism as the sole definition of our condition. The second
is example of self criticism.
At
Ahidiana we actively studied political theory -- Amilcar Cabral
was our most respected theorist. We also were very much into
criticism and self criticism. We developed position papers which
delineated a methodology for both giving and taking criticism.
While
all of this probably seems strange and a bit far out to people
who are used to functioning as individuals, in the context of a
collective, there was always a need to monitor the motion of the
group less we end up in a state of cultish self delusion. Part
of that monitoring process was criticism and self criticism. The
balance for us was our iron clad rule that we made decisions by
consensus, if and only if, everyone agreed would we establish a
rule, take a political position, or commit ourselves to an
action. Other organizations and individuals repeatedly
criticized us for our rule by consensus, but it served us well
and kept the more articulate from brow beating the less
articulate into accepting something that each in the group was
not prepared to accept. Just the knowledge that each individual
had veto power forced all of us to be sharper in presenting our
ideas. We knew we had to convince each member.
Again,
this probably seems to be a very restrictive situation for an
artist to be in, but exactly the opposite was the case. The
majority of my work from that period was sharpened by group
criticism and I was emboldened by the knowledge that these ideas
were not simply an artistic idiosyncrasy, but valuable insights
shared by a close community of committed individuals.
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all
that's black ain't brother
1.
white
people
come
in all colors
their
systems sink
past
skin
anchoring
into bone, mind
flesh,
heart and soul
it
is geno-suicide
to
minstrel aliens
but
some of us do die
strangled
by our own
hands
2.
some
of us
selfishly
think that
self
starts
and
stops
with
i
dream
not of peace
but
money, don't
dance,
hate
our
energy
and
lust for
an
equal opportunity
to
turn the screws
see
that
black
boy over there,
he's
white. |
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Diapers
and Dishes
i
can thrust
my
hand straight
into
the toilet bowl, expertly
swirling
a soiled diaper around
shaking
loose all the stool
as
I submerge the cotton cloth
agitating
with a firm
back
and forth action
i
used to recoil
from
the touch and texture
of
warm masticated corn
kernel
hulls and other leavings
smellingly
ejaculated
from
our babies' behinds
but
now it is no bother
i used to be upset
coming
home late at night
shake
my head and suck
my
teeth at the sight
of
dirty dishes in the sink
now
I willingly wash them
these
tasks are so simple
since
my thought
has
been reformed
Tayari
can read now at night
since
we share house work
and
mutually develop
now,
after much self struggle, i
too
can change
diapers
and wash dishes
i
laugh at my old self
sulking
about bowel movement
and
toilet water on my hands
or
dishes that need only
a
little time and hardly any
trouble
to be made clean
i
laugh at my old self
if
feels good to improve |
In a feature length
profile of me published in a local weekly, writer James Borders
judged:
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More
congenial now to dialectics, ya Salaam's work in
'Revolutionary Love' reverberates with a new fullness
that is more deeply personal and more deeply social than
any of his past attempts. It is all statement and it has
found its most effective distance. Published by Ahidiana
and printed on the group's own press, the poems and
essays that comprise the text are gorgeously embellished
by the drawings of Douglas Redd and the photographs of
Kwadwo Oluwale Akpan. If the words don't grab you, the
visuals will. |
Borders
was impressed by the total package, which is exactly what we
intended. Early on in FST/BLKARTSOUTH, we were using drawings
and photographs in our publications as well as text. This was
because a number of the members were visual artists as well as
writers, and because as we continued, both Tom and I believed it
was important to include the visual artists in the presentation
of our work. This was another example of our insistence on broad
inclusion. We were always looking for ways to hook up with
others. Eventually, we would also begin inviting blues and jazz
musicians to perform with us.
This
development was not accidental. We aspired to a holistic concept
of the arts, even before we had the theories to articulate and
rationalize why we did. We felt it and went with our feelings.
Later, we would be able to define what our feelings were.
By
the Ahidiana time period we went all the way. Ahidiana had a
performing ensemble, composed of musicians and singers as well
as poets, called the "Essence of Life." We produced a
weekly radio program for six months of so which was also called
the "Essence of Life." The name was taken from a song
by Gary Bartz and Andy Bey whose chorus was "we must get
closer to the essence of life." This was in addition to
owning and operating our own press: not just a publishing
company, but an actual printing machine which was run by Kuumba
Kazi, a member of Ahidiana who had had experience operating a
printing press. We were serious about actualizing the principles
of self determination and self reliance.
All of this affected my writing. How could it not? What
may sound like fantasies and exaggeration reading it cold on the
page, actually had a social basis in that we had an active
organization whose total goal was to turn words and ideals into
revolutionary deeds. Everything we did was designed to actively
raise the liberation struggle to a higher level. We were much
more than just talk, we were action -- and that action inspired
me to write like I had never written before.
<-----Pamoja
Tutashinda (together we
will win)
Iron Flower & Our Women Keep
Our Skies--->* *
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m a big fan of
Charles Mann’s previous book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus,
in which he provides a sweeping and provocative examination
of North and South America prior to the arrival of
Christopher Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched but so
wonderfully written that it’s anything but exhausting to
read. With his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a new, truly global
level. Building on the groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m proud to say, a fellow
Nantucketer), Mann has written nothing less than the story
of our world: how a planet of what were once several
autonomous continents is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to
countless scientists and researchers; he visited the places
he writes about, and as a consequence, the book has a
marvelously wide-ranging yet personal feel as we follow Mann
from one far-flung corner of the world to the next. And
always, the prose is masterful. In telling the improbable
story of how Spanish and Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he takes us to the
island of Mindoro whose “southern coast consists of a number
of small bays, one next to another like tooth marks in an
apple.” We learn how the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar cane have disrupted
and convulsed the planet and will continue to do so until we
are finally living on one integrated or at least
close-to-integrated Earth. Whether or not the human
instigators of all this remarkable change will survive the
process they helped to initiate more than five hundred years
ago remains, Mann suggests in this monumental and revelatory
book, an open question. |
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The Persistence of the Color Line
Racial Politics and the Obama Presidency
By Randall Kennedy
Among the best things
about
The Persistence of the Color Line is watching Mr.
Kennedy hash through the positions about Mr. Obama staked
out by black commentators on the left and right, from
Stanley Crouch and Cornel West to Juan Williams and Tavis
Smiley. He can be pointed. Noting the way Mr. Smiley
consistently “voiced skepticism regarding whether blacks
should back Obama” . . .
The finest chapter in
The Persistence of the Color Line
is so resonant, and so personal, it could nearly be the
basis for a book of its own. That chapter is titled
“Reverend Wright and My Father: Reflections on Blacks and
Patriotism.” Recalling some of the criticisms of
America’s past made by Mr. Obama’s former pastor, Mr.
Kennedy writes with feeling about his own father, who put
each of his three of his children through Princeton but who
“never forgave American society for its racist mistreatment
of him and those whom he most loved.” His father
distrusted the police, who had frequently called him “boy,”
and rejected patriotism. Mr. Kennedy’s father “relished
Muhammad Ali’s quip that the Vietcong had never called him
‘nigger.’ ” The author places his father, and Mr. Wright, in
sympathetic historical light. |
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update 3 May
2009
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