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Books by Kalamu ya
Salaam
The Magic of JuJu: An Appreciation of the Black Arts Movement
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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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What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self
By Kalamu ya Salaam
In
What Is Life: Reclaiming the Black Blues Self,
Kalamu ya Salaam -- poet, activist, cultural worker and contributor to
the best-selling Black Erotica -- takes us on an introspective journey
in search of the answers that African Americans struggle to obtain. His
reflections capture our movement and complacency, involvement and
noninvolvement from the mid-sixties to the present. Salaam insists,
"The central issue of What Is Life? is to focus on the
difficult and contradictory, to grapple with the hard issues."
What happened to Civil Rights? Did the Black Power Revolution fail?
Who benefited from integration? What happened to the Black
revolutionaries? Where are tha measses of Black people headed as we
engage the nineties? Encased in piercing poetic insight, What Is Life/
offers hope and direction and moves us closer to constructing a
"realistic and effective ideology to serve our continuing
development."—Third World Press (1994) Kalamu ya
Salaam's words are pensive,
painful. Informative. They say we were. We are. We shall be if we
continue to walk and talk this newly found freedom. And above all, his
words say resist. Resist. Resist.—Sonia
Sanchez, poet and
professor, Temple University
Baring one's soul in public is not an easy task, but
greater self-assurance rewards those who venture boldly into such
philosophic dialogue. . . . Kalamu ya Salaam uncovers a host of unresolved
personal crises of accountability to our life's mission. Are we Africans
in America? African-Americans? Or more American than African depite our
rhetorical symbolism . . . For many of us, it will be painful to admit
that we failed both at systematic change through revolution as well as
maintaining alternative institutions in the face of irreconcilable
differences.—Hannibal
Afrik, Council of Independent Black Institute
Kalamu ya Salaam (the
Pen of Peace)), the poet laureate of New Orleans, is to
Black poetry what Louis Armstrong and Wynton Marsalis
are to jazz. In What Is Life? he intones a
powerful tune that tells children of the African
diaspora how we speak our ancestral African name and
find oneness in the expression. Essentially, What Is
Life? is that vital ray of rhythmic darkness that
encircles all of the librations of life (even the evil
ones) and transforms them into an organic spiritual
light that reveals and heals as it multiplies itself in
grace and glory. read it and be healed.—Morris F.X. Jeff, Jr.
This is clearly an important and engaging
work. It offers a brilliant balance between poetry and prose, the
aesthetic and the instructive, experiences had and lessons learned,
daily hassle and continuing hope, being and doing Black anyhow. It will
remain throughout the years a testament of possibility for those of us
who still embrace the whirlwind and wonder of love and struggle.—Maluana Karenga, Professor and Chair,
Department of Black Studies, Cailfornia State University, Long Beach
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music website >
http://www.kalamu.com/bol/
writing website >
http://wordup.posterous.com/
daily blog >
http://kalamu.posterous.com
twitter >
http://twitter.com/neogriot
facebook >
http://www.facebook.com/kalamu.salaam
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Guarding the Flame of Life
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New Orleans Jazz Funeral for tuba player Kerwin
James /
They danced atop his casket Jaran 'Julio' Green
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Track List
1. Congo Square (9:01)
2. My Story, My Song (20:50)
3. Danny Banjo (4:32)
4. Miles Davis (10:26)
5. Hard News For Hip Harry (5:03)
6. Unfinished Blues (4:13)
7. Rainbows Come After The Rain (2:21)/Negroidal Noise (15:53)
8. Intro (3:59)
9. The Whole History (3:14)
10. Negroidal Noise (5:39)
11. Waving At Ra (1:40)
12. Landing (1:21)
13. Good Luck (:04) |
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Malcolm X
A Life of Reinvention
By
Manning Marable
Years
in the making-the definitive biography of
the legendary black activist.
Of the great figure in twentieth-century
American history perhaps none is more
complex and controversial than Malcolm X.
Constantly rewriting his own story, he
became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and
an icon, all before being felled by
assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine.
Through his tireless work and countless
speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands
of black Americans to create better lives
and stronger communities while establishing
the template for the self-actualized,
independent African American man. In death
he became a broad symbol of both resistance
and reconciliation for millions around the
world. |
Manning Marable's
new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement.
Filled with new information and shocking revelations
that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a
sweeping story of race and class in America, from the
rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the
struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties
and sixties.
Reaching into
Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his
parents' activism through his own engagement with the
Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the
world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the
never-before-told true story of his assassination.
Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of
the most singular forces for social change, capturing
with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in
the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.
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The Black Arts Movement
Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s
By
James Edward Smethurst
Emerging from a matrix of Old Left, black nationalist,
and bohemian ideologies and institutions, African
American artists and intellectuals in the 1960s
coalesced to form the Black Arts Movement, the cultural
wing of the Black Power Movement. In this comprehensive
analysis, James Smethurst examines the formation of the
Black Arts Movement and demonstrates how it deeply
influenced the production and reception of literature
and art in the United States through its negotiations of
the ideological climate of the Cold War, decolonization,
and the civil rights movement.
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Taking a
regional approach, Smethurst examines local expressions
of the nascent Black Arts Movement, a movement
distinctive in its geographical reach and diversity,
while always keeping the frame of the larger movement in
view. The Black Arts Movement, he argues, fundamentally
changed American attitudes about the relationship
between popular culture and "high" art and dramatically
transformed the landscape of public funding for the
arts.—Publisher,
University of North Carolina Press
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Visions of a Liberated Future
Black Arts Movement Writings
By
Larry Neal
"What we have been
trying to arrive at is some kind of
synthesis of the writer's function as an
oppressed individual and a creative
artist," states Neal (1937-1981), a
writer, editor, educator and activist
prominent in the Black Arts movement of
the 1960s and '70s. Articulate, highly
charged essays about the black
experience examine the views of his
predecessors--musicians and political
theorists as well as
writers--continually weighing artistic
achievement against political efficacy.
While the essays do not exclude any
readers, Neal's drama, poetry and
fiction are more limited in their form
of address, more explicitly directed to
the oppressed. The poems are
particularly intense in their protest:
"How many of them / . . . have been made
to /prostitute their blood / to the
merchants of war." Rhythmic and adopting
the repetitive structure of music, they
capture the "blues in our mothers'
voices / which warned us / blues people
bursting out." Commentaries by Neal's
peers, Amiri Baraka, Stanley Crouch,
Charles Fuller and Jayne Cortez,
introduce the various sections.—Publishers
Weekly |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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