Cover Art by Najee Dorsey
From the introduction to Amiri Baraka’s Blues People at 60: Still a Portal to the Future:
“Blues People—where the sages passed us along with songs that told the stories with words and sounds and movement. Rhythm Travel, he called it in one brilliant work of sonic science fictional history. The blues was the foundation of the Black music that would emerge from the South, during the most terrible times, from enslavement to Jim Crow. It would be the grounding for the new forms that Black people created, often without attribution, very often being robbed by white folks who saw and still see and steal the economic potential of Black music. This complete story had never been written, the story of Blues People, what was taken from them and what they gave. It had never been connected so clearly to their emergent, unique identity. There had never been a book like this—published in 1963 and never out of print for over 60 years. It is still the cornerstone book on the development of African descendants into an African American people, which is why we celebrate its relentlessly strong resonances from the past and into the future.” – Michael Simanga, Guest ed.
Issue includes the following:
- Introduction: Streaming, by Michael Simanga
- No Dead Goats #2: For Amiri Baraka, by jessica Care moore
- Baraka in Blue, by Keith Gilyard
- The Gospel According to LeRoi Jones: Gospel Music as Passing Reference in Blues People, by Clarissa Myrick-Harris
- Blues People: A Memoir, by Tony Bolden
- “But What About Amina?”: On Blues People and the Politics of Dedication, by Naomi Extra
- Blues People: Amiri Baraka as Social Theorist, by Ingrid Monson
- Amiri’s Dream, or The Blue Futures of (Negro) Music, by Guthrie P. Ramsey , Jr.
- Digging: An Unpublished Conversation with Amiri Baraka, November 2, 2010, by Tony Medina
- “Music that Moves Me”: Preliminary Thoughts on Black Music and Urban Education in the Era of Black Power, by Dara Walker
- Book Reviews: Model Minority Masochism: Performing the Cultural Politics of Asian American Masculinity by Takeo Rivera. Reviewed by Crystal Song; The Matter of Black Living: The Aesthetic Experiment of Racial Data, 1880–1930 by Autumn Womack. Reviewed by Jacob Walters
For a limited time, download and read the introduction and “The Gospel According to LeRoi Jones: Gospel Music as Passing Reference in Blues People,” by Clarissa Myrick-Harris for free.
Personal subscriptions are $46 USD and include 4 issues. You can subscribe to our 54th volume here. A limited quantity of print back issues are available in our store. Small stock update coming soon.
The rest of our 2024 volume will include Black Women’s Contemporary Speculative Fiction, Afrobeats, and Ceddo: Black British Independent Film
