Kalamu Interview4

Books by Kalamu ya Salaam

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Books by Langston Hughes

Weary Blues (1926) / The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes / The Ways of White Folks (Stories) / The Big Sea: An Autobiography

A New Song (1938) / Best of Simple / I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey / New Negro Poets U.S.A.

Not Without Laughter /Five Plays by Langston Hughes / Selected Poems of Langston Hughes

Ask Your Mama: Twelve Moods for Jazz / Fine Clothes to the Jew / The Collected Works of Langston Hughes (Poems 1921-1940)

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Interview with Award Winning Neo-Griot

Kalamu ya Salaam

Langston as Literary Influence

Rudy: You have attended a few writing workshops or retreats. How has those events influenced your writing in any significant way?

Kalamu: I have not attended any workshops or retreats as a student in over twenty years. Attending as a teacher or presenter is just an extension of what I do with NOMMO. I like to get around to hear and see what other writers are doing, both my peers and younger writers. I very much want to know what is going on. In that regard, the greatest influence is that being aware of what is happening helps me keep my work fresh.

Rudy: By retreat, I mean do you ever go to a "writer’s colony," a place you can get away from the usual hustle bustle, to think, to meditate, to write, to be among other writers, your peers? I thought the last time I saw you, you said you had won some fellowship award that allowed you to do just this? I must have misunderstood what you meant.

Kalamu: Oh, yeah, I won a senior fellowship from the Arts Colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts. I spent three weeks there with nothing to do but read, write and think. But that was the only time in my life and although it was productive, that’s not something I want to do again. I thrive on what some people call hustle and bustle. I have a short attention span. Plus, I write very quickly. And I love the work I do, so I’m not trying to get away to anywhere.

Rudy: I understand that Langston Hughes is your major poetic influence? Is your appeal similar to his? Do you believe his audience was liberal whites and the black intellegentsia? Langston was a professional writer; that is, he made his living off his work. Can that still be done? What do you think was Langston’s vision of America?

Kalamu: In poetry, Langston was my first and most lasting influence, but my major influence has been the music and culture of black folk. Techniques I have developed, approaches I have decided to explore, all come out of contact with black folk and the cultural expressions we have developed. This necessarily means that I am drawn to and most responsive to working class black folk, those who labor (whether "legally or illegally") to earn a living. [See poetic autobiography section "two: what Langston did."]

Hughes’ prime audience was working class black folk, but that was not his sole audience. Indeed, Hughes wrote for different audiences although the bulk of his work seems to me to be addressed to working class black folk and those who understand or empathize with that orientation. Hughes’ appeal to the intellegentsia was, and remains, limited to those intellegentsia who are appreciative of black culture and its working class roots.

Today, it is much more possible to make a living as a black writer than during Hughes’ time.

Hughes was a clear advocate of diversity. Respect for different peoples, different ways of doing things and at the same time he had profound faith in political democracy. So I guess you could say: cultural diversity and political democracy. His views on economic matters seems to have shifted over the years and I am not sure what economic views he held in his latter years.

Rudy: I don’t want to really press the point. But do you really think that most of Hughes’ work was working-class directed? Were members of the working class buying his books or attending his readings? Were they the ones who were even reading Crisis and Opportunity where some of his poems could be found? I would probably agree the Simple tales had a working class orientation. Though possessing an element of folk humor, don’t you think they had an air of minstrelsy about them? Don’t you think that given a blues poem by Hughes and a blues lyric by Muddy Waters, that Hughes wouldn’t have had a chance among Mississippi cotton pickers?

Kalamu: There is a misunderstanding about both Hughes and Muddy. It’s interesting that you mention Muddy. Muddy Waters didn’t become big until he hit Chicago and hooked up with Chess Records. Hughes was already big when he hooked up with the Chicago Defender and did the Simple series. Simple was published in a Black newspaper at a time when Black folk read the paper. Crisis and Opportunity was stuff of the 20s, by the 30s through the 50s Hughes was in another space.

Certainly he had more Black readers than any other writer until Richard Wright’s Black Boy and Native Son . Furthermore, the big three of Black poets who were taught in the segregated public schools of the South were Paul Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones and Langston Hughes. Hughes was available in the schools, Hughes was in the newspaper and Hughes had books. No other writer came close to that reach into the hearts and minds of the Black community at the working class level.

Rudy: I have heard you read, perform your poems and I have heard about Baraka’s performances. Both of you use humor. I heard Sonia Sanchez speak of Malcolm’s humor and how he used it as a technique to draw people in. Could you speak further how you make use of humor in your poems?

Kalamu: Well, I’m not as funny as Baraka. But you know, humor is only an exaggeration of a commonly recognized reality, and exaggeration as an aesthetic is at the core of African-heritage expressiveness. I mean if you look at the statues of traditional Africa, if you look at our dance movements, if you listen to how we worry notes. All of that is expressive exaggeration. Humor is just putting a little ironic twist on it.

Rudy: You have written and spoken about the importance of the Black Arts Movement. Is there a philosophical or ideological relationship between BAM and the "neo-griot" movement? Is it just a matter of a technological updating?

Kalamu: Well, I would not equate neo-griot with BAM. BAM was a nationwide movement that involved literally thousands of people. Neo-griot is my particular approach. Certainly my approach grows directly out of my involvement in BAM, but unlike BAM, and this is a major distinction, neo-griot is not associated with a particular political movement.

The creative use of communications technology in cultural work is constant in black culture in America. It is just that many of us are not aware of how closely aligned the use of technology and the expressions of our culture are. Perhaps because we seldom do anything just for the sake of technology, and thus technology is always used to facilitate our expression rather than to be the focus or subject of our expression.

As a people we focus on human relationships even as we use various technical developments to effectuate our cultural expressions. A prime example of this would be Stevie Wonder’s InnerVisions, which is widely praised but seldom looked at primarily as a technological marvel, even though it broke new ground for the use of electronics in popular music. I think the ability to humanize the use of technology has always been a hallmark of black culture, and in that regard, hopefully, neo-griot is a continuation of that trend.

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