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Books by Askia M. Touré
From the Pyramids to the Projects: Poems of Genocide and
Resistance! /
Dawnsong:The Epic Memory of Askia
Toure
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Rudy
Interviews Askia Touré
On Dawnsong!
And the Black Arts Movement
Part I
Rudy: What do you consider the central
aspects and tenets of the Black Arts
Movement? Wasn’t this poetic flowering much larger
than its ideological center?
Askia: The BAM rested upon the
basic foundations of what Dr. Du Bois, Henry Highland Garnet,
and Martin R. Delany defined as a “Nation-within-a-Nation.”
Added to the rather poetic definitions of these 19th
century visionaries were the twentieth-century experience of the
Garvey movement, and the historical and political analysis of
Harry Haywood, whose volume, Negro Liberation defined the
national and class structure of the African-American Nation, and
its actual Land-base stretching from approximately
Delaware to East Texas, the so-called Southern Black-Belt.
Political scholar
Harold Cruse, in his seminal essay,
“Rebellion or Revolution,” defined our current situation as
“Domestic Colonialism”—that the Black Nation was White
America’s “domestic colony.”
Within this definition, the Northern
Migrations, creating “Inner Cities” (“Bantustans”?) were
migrations into the modern United States; the overall South
itself being seen
as a mainly agricultural semi-colony of the United States.
The Black Arts Cultural Revolution
wasn’t a movement of “poets,” it was a massive cultural
revolution led by some revolutionary poet-activists,
linked with “New Music” rebels, visual artists, dramatists,
actors, film-makers, dancers, scholars, cultural workers,
theorists, and others. In fact, it was the largest U.S. mass
cultural movement in the twentieth century . . . It was also
the quest of a Generation to find its Identity, and
therefore, its overall Destiny.
“Who are you?”
Brother Malcolm asked us. What is your
name (as opposed to the Slave-masters’: Kunta Kinte, as
opposed to “Toby,” or “Sam” or “Willie”)? What did your
Ancestors write, speak or teach about Humanity’s place in the
universe? Our
Generation’s mission was the Quest for an answer to
Malcolm’s seminal questions.
Mundane Specifics: In 1964 key
political, cultural activists met in New York to launch the
beginning stages of a Cultural Revolution, which was to function
as the cultural wing of the Black Liberation Movement, whose
goal was Freedom and Self-Determination for the African-American
people. That Self-determination included revolutionary/Liberation
Struggle up to, and including, Separation, if the
African-American people desired.
Rudy: Is there a neo-BAM afoot? Or are
we just celebrating past victories, as seems evident in Furious
Flower?
Askia: How can there be a
“neo-BAM” when most people putting these immature attitudes
forward, haven’t studied the seminal writings, developed the
deep self-discipline, and made the overall spiritual
dedication, and self-sacrifice, to our people and Ancestors,
that necessitates creating a Cultural Revolution, and leading a
revolutionary life?
My thinking is 180 degrees from your
question, in that it questions your assumptions.
Rudy: When you are called an architect
of BAM what does that mean for you? What was your distinct
contribution to the movement that was, say, different from that
which Amiri Baraka (Le Roi Jones)
or Marvin X added to the character
and substance of BAM.
Askia: One critically important thing
that has failed to be mentioned. The BARTS in Harlem didn't just
"fail" or "run out of steam." Amiri, Larry,
and I were attacked because we championed Bro. Malcolm X, &
Liberator magazine's special "Malcolm X" issue.
In Feb., ' 66, the Harlem Black Community organized a
Malcolm X mass march from 110th St. to the Audobon, led by Queen
Mother Audley Moore. Thousands participated, a year after the
Assassination.
Larry Neal and I
(who wrote key articles praising Malcolm in Liberator)
were there, along with Amiri Baraka. Later, reactionary Islamic
extremists pulled a coup at the BARTS: word on the street was
that they physically attacked Amiri. They trapped me and several
local activists inside the Theatre, pulled guns, and announced
that they were going to assassinate myself--"and that
n----r, Larry Neal." Amiri's friend Bro. Charlie and two of
Malcolm's bodyguards saved my life as we backed out of the BARTS.
The next day, a bomb was thrown into my apartment, which I
shared w/two young RAM activists . . . we were long gone,
though.
Amiri was back in New Ark. I was Underground.
Larry Neal, the brilliant young poet
and scholar, was shot down in the street, by Charles Patterson &
those maniacs! Harlem embraced him, and luckily Bro. Larry
recovered.
In the interim, I went South w/SNCC and
co-wrote the "Black Power Position Paper," with
writer-activists, William Ware and Donald Stone. Afterwards, I
got a call from Sonia Sanchez, and went out from Atlanta to San
Francisco State University.
Later, I returned to Harlem, in ' 68; and
Comrade Ernie Allen, co-editor of Soulbook, and I
participated in Part II of the BAM, by organizing the
"Loft" movement on 125th St. Our Loft was called
"The Black Mind," and we joined in with the Original
Last Poets (of whom I became a mentor), whose Loft was named the
"East Wind."
These lofts, in conjunction with Barbara Ann
Teer's National Black Theater Workshop, the Studio Museum in
Harlem, led by our Black Dialogue editor, and comrade, Ed
Spriggs and with Robert McBeth and Ed Bullin's New Lafayette
Theater, and Ernie McClintock's theater, became the major
institutions which led the Second Phase of the Harlem BAM
(roughly '68 to '74) which was in continuous contact w/Imamu
Baraka's Spirit House in New Ark. Baraka's "Spirit
House Movers" often performed @ our Loft-theaters, and
visited the New Lafayette Theatre.
Rudy: What was wrong with BAM
that caused its lost of steam?
Askia: In the late ‘70s/early
‘80s, the United States suffered a major recession, plus
international conflict with Iran. This led to the election of
the notorious, right-wing reactionary Ronald Reagan to
President. Immediately he had Congress to cut “War on
Poverty” funding and destroy the fragile “safety nets” of
the Inner City masses of poor working people.
An Inner City which was already reeling from
the massive government-sponsored drug assaults, beginning in the
late 60s/early 70s, which ran from heroin (from South-east
Asia’s “Golden Triangle”) to Angel Dust, and finally
“Crack” and powdered cocaine from Columbia, Peru, and
finally Mexico.
With an Inner City depression, and an
unrelenting Drug Plague directed at the Black working masses,
then we lost hundreds of thousands of people who
supported the Liberation Movement/BAM.
Rudy: Some complained about its
racialist and restricted cultural orientation, and since the
1980s, its patriarchal, macho, and homophobic character.
Askia: As for the Movement’s
weaknesses, as far as I’m concerned, being young and
inexperienced, we failed to thoroughly train the masses of the
people to totally claim ownership of the Movement. At 68-70, the
Peak Period, we had hundreds of institutions, independent
schools in most major cities, a myriad of BAM theaters,
Muslim mosques, Yoruba temples, Afrocentric Churches, hundreds
of independent Black writers workshops, New Music Centers/clubs,
art galleries, etc. But, in most cases, we were only able to
hold on to them for about a Decade.
Also, in another area, there were many
aspects of sexism among many Black male activists; but no more
so than any other nationality or ethnic group. This sexism
manifested especially among “culturalists” who seemed to be
romanticizing what they fantasized as being “traditionally”
African or Islamic. Our Liberation sisters stood up, led the
fight to “re-educate” the brothers: criticizing them in
various groups and formations. Coupled with more
progressive-minded brothers, serious discussions and enlightened
debates began among the Liberation Organizations, such as the
RNA, the African Peoples Party, the League of Revolutionary
Struggle, the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party.
There was growing discussion about gender
oppression, but before the formations could develop positions on
these key questions & issues, they were attacked by the
FBI’s COINTELPRO, and many formations were destroyed or
seriously crippled.
While we’re speaking on this subject, I’d
like to point out that the mainly-white, bourgeois
“feminists” and their oreo flunkies utilized a
strategy to characterize—and character assassinate—the BAM
as sexist/patriarchal/homophobic formations, only led by males.
In the BAM/BLM, key Black women
liberation cadres were deliberately written out of history!
These sista-liberators were scholars, editors, organizers,
dramatists, and BAM theorists. I’ll name a leading few:
Writer-activist-scholar, Mari Evans, one of BAM’s major
theorists, Dr. Carolyn Fowler, Sister-poet-educator, Carolyn
Rogers, poet-Doctor Johari Amini, poet-Doctor Rikki
Lights, Sister-activist, Barbara Hamilton,
Sister-organizer, Barbara Carter, cultural-worker, Sis. Dorothy
White, Poet-editor Nikki Grimes, poet-writer-editor Jacqui
Earley, internationally renown, poet-educator, Nikki
Giovanni, major scholar-activist-poet Sarah Webster Fabio
(the professor of both Huey Newton and Bobby Seale!), community
organizer/activist Marianna Awaddy, Sister-poet, Kamako
Baraka, renown actress-cultural theorist-priestess, Barbara
Ann Teer, renown writer-activist, Tony Cade Bambara…
Most of the beautiful, dedicated women wrote
for the revolutionary journals, the leading Liberation Organs of
the BAM/BLM. I’ll close here by pointing out that the
massive journal, Black World, was edited and led by the
Hoyt W. Fuller, a gay man who was nationally loved,
respected and championed by the “homophobic” BAM male
cultural workers!
As writers and theorists, we struggled around
key aspects and issues of our BAM. One historically famous
event, arrogantly captured by Yale scholar, Kimberly Benson, was
the New Lafayette panel on We Righteous Bombers by
Kimberly B. Bass. This play which Bass/Bullins
"borrowed" from Albert Camus' We Just Assassins.
Ernie Allen and I debated Bob McBeth, Larry
Neal & Marvin X on the ethics of that issue.
As a "sexist," I demanded that
BAM sisters take the stage @ New Lafayette, and be included in the panel. I stood up, asking
them to join; however, though present in large
numbers, they shyly declined.
This event was important, both historically
& culturally, because it recorded the struggles & issues
within BAM, around revolutionary values and ethics, in our
Community, within the institutions we created.
Rudy: What media or art figures or
organs, more than any other, put BAM on the map and made
it creditable and, let’s say, respectable?
Askia: The leading theoretical and
ideological journals of the Black Arts Cultural Revolution were
the revolutionary journals:
Black America,
RAM’s theoretical journal, ‘63
Soulbook,
RAM’s cultural journal, ‘64
Black Dialogue,
‘65
The Journal of
Black Poetry, ‘66
Black Theatre,
‘67
Liberator
magazine, ‘61
Black World, ‘68
I was an editor of Black Dialogue, an
Editor-at-Large of the Journal of Black Poetry, an Editor
of Black America, and staff writer for Liberator
magazine. (I worked closely with the editorial staff and
activists of Soulbook, when I was working and teaching in
the Bay Area.)
I moved around the Country—Eastcoast,
Mid-west, South (where I helped to lead SNCC from Civil Rights
to Black Power—in Mississippi. and Atlanta). In the Bay Area,
where I worked with Sonia Sanchez, Nathan Hare, Bob Cayou, and
others in pioneering Africana Studies at San Francisco State
University. One of Sonia’s and my brightest students, was a
quietly modest, dedicated young man named Danny Glover. I taught
him African History, Sonia taught him African-American
Literature.
My friend and comrade, Marvin X and I worked
with lawyer William Patterson, Jim Lacey, and others in creating
the Huey P. Newton Defense Committee, when Huey was shot and
jailed by the police.
Both Larry Neal
and I worked with, and were mentored by, political scholar,
Harold Cruse, both at Liberator magazine, and in Black
Harlem. My slave name was Rolland Snellings.
In 1965, Liberator magazine named
Leroi Jones “Playwright of the Year,” and me “Poet of the
Year.” Liberator magazine was where Larry Neal, who was
easily the leading Black cultural critic of our
Generation, developed the foundation for his major literary
criticism of the 70s and 80s. How many of these “neo-BAM”
people have heard of Larry’s and my revolutionary essays at Liberator?
How many of them have even heard of the Black
Nationalist/Socialist Liberator magazine? And by the way,
the major BAM theorists—Larry Neal, Carolyn Fowler,
Sarah Fabio, Ernie Allen, Askia Toure—were Rev.
Nationalists/Third World Socialists—not backwards
“racialists”!
BAM was not attempting to be
“respectable” in the bourgeois sense of the term. In 1966 to
70, hundreds of U.S. cities were burning, as the Black masses
rose up in rebellion, in the greatest mass rebellions since the
slave revolts. “Burn, baby, Burn! Black Power! and “Nation
Time!” were the cries of the angry, black working masses. It
was the height of the African-American Intifada—and we
were liberation fighters—poets—Griots!
The Black working masses of Harlem, Brooklyn,
Detroit, Chicago, Newark, Detroit, New Orleans, Frisco, Oakland,
Cleveland, Atlanta, etc. made the BAM “creditable.” There
were black radical scholars, like Stephen Henderson, Vincent
& Rosemary Harding, Addison Gayle, Jr. who also championed
our vision and poetry as revolutionary.
The aroused Black masses gave us their stamp
of approval: they allowed us to teach themselves, and their
children Black History, Liberation Politics, Drama, Literature,
Art, Dance, Music, etc. (which was why the U.S. govt. had to
drug them and their children with heroin & “crack” by
the hundreds of thousands, so that the BAM/BLM could
“run out of gas,” as you so pleasantly put it).
Rudy: You were at the very beginning
of the Black Studies movement. It seems to have had its bloom in
Henry Louis Gates at Harvard and his alliance with Bill Gates.
What happened?
Askia: Black Studies had to be
co-opted—and sold out! I ask that you speak more thoroughly
with my mentor, Dr. Nathan Hare on this. What you spoke about as
“blooming,” many consider Skip Gates as the Colin Powell of
the Black Studies movement.
Rudy: Did you see the 60s arts
movement as a contemporary extension of the Harlem Renaissance
in that Langston Hughes was the Poet?
Askia: Certainly. Remember Baba
Langston Hughes was our Umbra mentor. He used to speak w/our
Umbra writers & editors weekly. He was our living Role
Model. He critiqued our work, and got us published in many
international anthologies. I saw our main difference with the
Harlem Renaissance as our being more consciously political,
mass-based (less elitist) and our brilliant revolutionary
journals led our movement politically, theoretically, and
ethically. We were an independent Movement.
Rudy:
How do you think BAM contributed to Asante’s Afrocentrism
and the rise of Def Poetry Jam and Russell Simmons, if at
all?
Askia: We, the BAM, were the
Archetype, Role Model, the massive Senior Movement, the
Foundation upon which Asante & others could build from.
Also, even Skip Gates stands upon our shoulders! We are the
Elder Griots who helped develop the East Coast Climate, and
Example(s)—Sonia, Amiri, Askia, the Last Poets—for the
rising new, hip-hop Generation.
Rudy:
In 1973, Arnold Adoff, The Poetry of Black America,
anthologized three of your poems: “Floodtide”
(dedicated to “black tenant farmers of the South”), “Tauhid”
(dedicated to “Pharaoh Sanders and the youth of the Black
Nation”), and “Juju” (dedicated to “John
Coltrane,
priest-prophet of the Black Nation”).
What elements in these poems still resonate
today? How has your approach or poetics matured since you were a
young man in your twenties and early thirties?
Askia: My early poems three of which
you mentioned, were the examples of a growing Vision which
sought to embrace the immediate Slave past, and integrate it
into an Overview which would embrace Ancient & Pre-colonial
Africa, the Maafa of chattel slavery, and the continuing effort
to become a Free People once again, developing an identity based
upon a somewhat fragmented, "neo-African"
folk-culture.
Being from Dayton, Ohio (though
Southern-born), I embraced and embodied the folklore and animal
tales of the Southern oral tradition, which survived via my
grandparents and the writings and language of our local Poet Laureate,
Paul Laurence Dunbar. (Our grade school teachers used to read
his dialect poetry daily to us.)
My poem, "Flood-tide," was
loosely based upon the meter of Dunbar's "The Corn
Song," which captured the syncopated rhythms of the "sankey"
and other Pre-blues forms.
"JuJu," the first BAM epic
poem, was an initial attempt to forge an epic out of the vision,
rhythm, and mythic/metaphorical voice of the Coltrane-led New
Music, or Cosmic Music explosion: the expansion involved in the
turn away from the West—and "nightclub jazz"—into
an embracing of the Cosmic Universe.
This new revolution in consciousness, led by
Trane, Sun Ra, Pharaoh Sanders, etc., was complemented by the
fiery cadences of minister Malcolm X, who functioned as
prophet/visionary, a goad & griot of a revolutionary,
Eastern morality emerging among us . . .
The poem "Tauhid" was a
primitive oral poem almost taken word for word out of Malik's
mouth. These early, youthful poems served as the initial rough
sketches towards an epic, apocalyptic Consciousness (as critic
Lorenzo Thomas speaks of my vision), which would grow into the
Body of Work which is the Isian/Osirian epic.
As for my "poetics," we're speaking
of a forty year expanse where—as I explained on my DVD—I had
to search for, embrace & absorb, the epic and lyrical
writing of international masters, such as Pablo Neruda in his
"Canto General," where he conceived of South American
man/woman in the Eden of that vast continent; & also be
inspired by W.B. Yeats' resurrection of the ancient Celtic
heroes/heroines alive in their primal civilizations before their
colonization by Anglos.
I also embraced and explored the Negritude
masters, especially Cesaire and Senghor. Cesaire's
"Notebook," along with Fanon's writing helped shape my
concepts of colonial Being from the inside . . .
Finally to show a continuity of vision is why
I included "JuJu" in
Dawnsong!—as the
original "seed" within the Nile Valley epic . . . but
first, I had to do a lot of developing—especially in terms of
rhythm, meter, metaphor the study of the elegy, iconography,
etc.
My admiration for Dr. Joyce is that she's a
scholar not only of African-American literature, but also of
African literature—and the griot tradition. Dr. Jerry Ward
seems to agree, in that he spoke of her introduction of
Dawnsong!
as being very intelligent. Source: Dawnsong!The Epic Memory of Askia
Toure By Askia M. Touré. Introduction by Joyce A. Joyce. Dawnsong!
won the 2003 "Stephen Henderson Poetry Award." – presented
by the African-American Literature and Culture Society of the American
Literature Association.
* * *
* * Askia
Muhammad Touré in New York and at Sistas' Place:
From Monday, September 18th thru Sunday, September 23, 2007 Askia
Muhammad Touré will be in New York and Newark, celebrating the recent
publication of two collections of poetry: Mother Earth Responds:
Green Poems and Alternative Visions (Whirlwind Press), and
African Affirmations: Songs for Patriots (Africa World Press).
Right alongside Amiri Baraka, Larry
Neal, Sonia Sanchez, Audre Lorde, June Jordan, etc., Askia Muhammad
Touré is considered one of the principal architects of the 1960s Black
Arts/Black Aesthetic movements. A member of the legendary Umbra Group
and of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Touré has remained
an activist poet of conscience throughout his years. His other books
include Earth (1968), JuJu: Magic Songs for the Black Nation
(with playwright Ben Caldwell / 1970), Songhai! (1972), and
From the Pyramids to the Projects (1990), which won an American Book
Award. Widely published in Black Scholar, Soulbook,
Black Theatre, Black World, and Freedomways, his poems
and essays have embodied the ideology of a people seeking to reclaim
their images and history.
Rudy Interviews Askia Touré
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posted 12/16/04
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updated 9 October 2007 |
