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  /  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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four. BLKARTSOUTH

...it seems to me that the audience, in listening, is in an act of participation, you know. And when you know that somebody is maybe moved the same way you are, to such a degree or approaching the degree, it's just like having another member in the group.-- John William Coltrane

            Here it was, July 1968 and although I had rejected the profession of music and also was impelled toward participating in the Black power movement, in terms of specifics, other than a gradually cohering desire to write, I had absolutely no idea about what I wanted to do with my life.

            Part of the problem was I really didn't know any writers personally, so I had no idea what the writing life was actually about or how to go about becoming a writer.

            Unlike abandoning music, my decision to be a writer was not spurred by a specific incident or a specific realization. Over the next six months, I found myself writing more and more, and found the people around me responding to the poetry I was writing. So after getting positive feedback, I just kept on doing it.

             In September of 1968 I tried college again. I enrolled as a freshman at SUNO (Southern University in New Orleans). I ran head first into academe and it's ignorance of and disdain for the black arts movement. I wrote a poem called "John Who" which focused on the overall ignorance of John Coltrane by various faculty members in the different departments. Then there was the incident that sealed any hope that I would reach some dÇtente with SUNO's academe.

            I was in Dr. Taylor's English lit class. We were studying ballads. In the text book there were the Scottish ballads, and some examples of American ballads. One of the ballads we studied was a blues ballad, I think it was Frankie and Johnny, and there was the phrase "the window was throwed up high." Dr. Taylor, who had her Ph.D. in Chaucher or some other area of "olde English," asked did anyone know what the phrase meant. I smiled. That was easy. I told her it meant the window was wide open, "like in 'when you see me coming, throw yo window high, when you see me leaving, hang yo head and cry." She told me I was wrong. She said that what the phrase referred to was the architecture of the period and how the windows were built high off the ground. Well I didn't know architecture but I did know bullshit.

            On the other side of the coin, my writing was fueled in part by the impatience and arrogance of youth. Here is a short poem from that period. Imagine this piece read by a bushy headed, sunglass wearing (we was so cool we sometimes even wore sunglasses at night), militant.

            By the end of the first semester I and a handful of other students, some of whom were veterans like myself, were in open rebellion against the administration. By the spring semester of 1969 we organized a take over of the university, completely shutting it down. In New Orleans I became known as both a militant leader and the leader of a drama group which meant that the two identities were fused in the public's mind.   

            I used my poems in various community programs where I was a volunteer and at community events. One of my first major pieces in that regard was "All In The Street" which spoke in poetic tones about the tidal wave of us dancing in the street with brass bands. The poem had the closing line which suggested, just like we took the streets, "the cities are next."

            At this point I began experimenting with using New Orleans music in my work. It was conscious in that I knew I was doing it, but subconscious in that I had not figured out what I was doing other than emulating the music and/or being inspired by specific musical performances. As I developed, the music became more and more integral to both the structure and the performance of my poetry.

            Here is where my basic style as a public poet got its start. I wanted to reflect and project the dreams and aspirations, the reality and history, the ethos and diverse ideologies of my community, a community on the move, in transition from oppression to liberation. Some view this simply as polemical poetry, but, for me, a particular party line was not the important thing. The important thing was the identification with the community at large and the desire to serve my community.

            My desire determined a style. My work had to be mass oriented. The images, the metaphors, the style, as well as the themes, the concerns and the emotional orientations, all had to draw on the social realities of our community or else it would be rejected, or, worse yet, ignored.

            Audience is a major force in the style of any and every poet. Some poets never think of or define their audience. Some say that they write from the heart, or write the truth and that who ever appreciates that work is the audience. But, even in those cases, is it not true that the language of the poetry will determine who is in a position to relate to (both understand and appreciate) the poetry both stylistically and content wise?

            A critical part of my style was the utilization of the oral as a poetic sine qua non. For me and my community, it was not enough for the poetry to exist as text. Our poetry needed to be oral.

            I remembered reading Langston Hughes explaining why he used rhyme and how rhyme could more easily be remembered by both the poet but especially also by the audience. I used rhyme but not at the ends of lines. Early on, I learned to use what I call internal rhymes and absolute rhymes. An internal rhyme was the use of the same and similar sounds in the middle of lines but rhythmically in the same place in different lines. An absolute rhyme was the repeating of the same word or phrase, usually at the beginning of the line, but sometimes at the end.

            In addition to rhyme, irony and humor (particularly sarcasm and caricature) were important elements of my early style precisely because community people responded to these elements. Irony, deliberate understatement and/or the emphasizing of the split between the literal meaning and the contextual meaning of a word, phrase, idea or image, is a hallmark of African American humor. Irony is also a mask, a tool for resistance and rebellion presented in a seemingly innocuous or non-threatening manner. Finally, irony is reinterpretation by causing the audience to reconsider a given reality from a different point of view. Next to the use of music, irony is probably the salient characteristic of our work from that period.

            Here is a poem, "Leader," which is illustrative of the period. This is actually a chorepoem in that it was both a dance and a poem. Eventually, we had a whole set of dance poems which we did like a chorus line with different members taking the lead. Similarly we had a set of "hair" poems.

            "Leader" opens with me clapping and improvising a funky dance while encouraging the audience to clap along, which usually didn't take much encouragement. At some point in the dance I would stop, move directly to the audience, recite the poem with a cocky air, and at the conclusion go back to dancing.

            That summer&fall of 1968, just out of the army and full of fire, engaged in community activity, I found the perfect stage for my calling as a community based writer at the Free Southern Theatre. I went to both the weekly writing workshops conducted by Tom Dent and to the weekly drama workshops conducted by Robert "Big Daddy" Costley. There were only a handful of us attending either workshop, with a core of three or four of us who attended both. Eventually the workshops combined and that led to the development of the writing/performing workshop which eventually developed its own identity as BLKARTSOUTH.

            Excepting for Tom Dent, none of the other workshop members thought of writing in terms of fiction or prose. Much of what would normally have been channeled in that direction was redirected into drama and performance poetry partly because there was immediate feedback. Not only did we critique each other's work, we also would give the work dramatized readings. Inevitably, people began writing poetry and drama rather than prose.

            Here are two of the first poems I published. Both of them are blues. "Love" is a traditional blues piece written under the influence of Langston Hughes and "And Black women!" is a more modern blues, self referential and intentionally didactic.

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