This is a living archive of rare and underrecognized poetry recordings and antiquefuturisms– often works that explore the role of words as music in very literal, unflinching ways, as well as pieces that understand oration as a primary element of the literary arts. Also cataloged here are elective affinities of such work, and some of the spectral ideologies that make these endeavors possible, impossible (mythic/mythless), and imperative.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Name Names
Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka, Joseph Jarman, Nancy Dupree, Archie Shepp, Moondog, Sunny Murray, Brother Ah, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Ai, Mingus, Monk, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Fred Hampton, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, MLK, Roy Brooks and the Artistic Truth, Ted Joans, The Watts Prophets, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Fred Moten, Gylan Kain, Tracy Morris, Anthony Braxton, Freddie Hubbard, Jeanne Lee, Sarah Webster Fabio, Duke Ellington, Jayne Cortez, Michael Harper, Bill T Jones, Steve Coleman, Sterling Brown, Human Arts Ensemble, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Black Artists Group, Gil Scott Heron, Haki Madhubuti, Last Poets, Curtis Lyle, Julius Hemphill, Doug Hammond, Weldon Irvine, Leon Thomas, Kamou Daáood, Eugene B. Redmond, Oba and Vajava The Black Messengers, Nathan Davis, Bama the Village Poet, Tony Williams, Bill Gunn, Abbey Lincoln, George Russell, Shirley Clarke, Kamau Braithwaite, David Axelrod, Melvin Van Peebles, MF Doom, Mos Def, Theo Parrish, Cornell West, Cannonball Adderley, Nina Simone, James Baldwin, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Clarice Lispector, Pessoa, Katherine Dunham, Ralph Lemon, Jackie McLean, Ralph Ellison, Dorothy West, Nathaniel Mackey, Alice Coltrane, Ma-at, Joseph Campbell, Edouard Glissant, Maya Deren, Build an Ark, Milford Graves, John Akomfrah
Give me a reason
The last thing negroes need now are black imitators of neurotic white writers... we possess within ourselves a great reservoir of physical and spiritual strength to which poetry fiction and stage should give voice— Langston Hughes, April 1965 The Task of The Negro Writer as Artist
I ran from it and was still in it; it was so big I ran from it and was still in it– Fred Moten
If you are a diasporic subject, the archive acquires a special poignancy for you, because it is the space of the memorial, there are very few tangible memorials which say 'you have been here,' and so the archive is important because it's one of the spaces in which the memorial attests to your existence, but in the archival one also finds a struggle between the official and the unofficial, because the archival both brings out what is accepted as what has happened and illustrates, sometimes, what has to be repressed in order for what's happened to happen – John Akomfrah
I ran from it and was still in it; it was so big I ran from it and was still in it– Fred Moten
If you are a diasporic subject, the archive acquires a special poignancy for you, because it is the space of the memorial, there are very few tangible memorials which say 'you have been here,' and so the archive is important because it's one of the spaces in which the memorial attests to your existence, but in the archival one also finds a struggle between the official and the unofficial, because the archival both brings out what is accepted as what has happened and illustrates, sometimes, what has to be repressed in order for what's happened to happen – John Akomfrah
Saturday, February 9, 2013
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