S Y MP HO N YA H A L L R O D T E WARK, 1 0 3 0 B S , N NJ A N U A R Y J 1 8 , 2 0 1 4 10AM –4PM
Amiri Baraka October 7, 1934 - January 9, 2014
Amiri Baraka (aka Imamu Baraka, aka LeRoi Jones),
was born Everett Leroy Jones on October 7, 1934 in Newark, NJ to the late Coyt Leroy Jones and Anna (Russ) Jones. He graduated Barringer High School in 1952. He went on to Rutgers Univer sity and later Howard University. He left How ard a semester short of graduating and later joined the Air Force where he was discharged because of his affiliation with reading material that was considered subversive.
After leaving the Air Force, Amiri moved to New York where he took an editorial job at a music magazine, The Record Changer, and settled in Greenwich Village. He co-founded a literary magazine, Yugen, which published his work and that of Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Jack Kerouac. With the poet Diane di Prima, he established and edited another literary magazine, The Floating Bear. He also started a small publishing company, Totem Press, which in 1961 issued his first collection of verse, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note. “Mr. Jones considered himself a largely apolitical writer at first. His poetry was concerned more with introspection, but he was radicalized by traveling to Cuba in 1960, the year after Fidel Castro came to power, to attend an international conference featuring writers from an array of third world countries. As a result, he later said that he came to believe that art and politics should be forever linked.” - Margalit Fox, The New York Times His political awakening was soon manifested in his work. His first major book, Blues People, published in 1963, placed black music -- from blues to free jazz -- in a wider socio-historical context. He also edited the Moderns: An Anthology of New Writing in America, published in 1963. Baraka’s reputation as a playwright was established with the production of Dutchman at Cherry Lane Theater in New York on March 24, 1964. The controversial play subsequently won the Obie Award for Best Off-Broadway Play and was made into a film in 1967. The play was revived by Cherry Lane Theater in January 2007 and has been reproduced around the world. In 1965, Baraka moved to Harlem where he founded the Black Arts Repertory Theatre/School. BARTS lasted only one year but had a lasting influence on the direction of Afro American Arts. BARTS sent five trucks a day into the Harlem community, full of artists and poets, to display artwork and perform poetry readings, music and drama. Performances were given in changed locations each day. Vacant lots, playgrounds and housing projects pushed art that would be “Black as Bessie Smith,” mass-based, revolutionary and taken to the people; reflecting the intensity of the entire Black Liberation Movement. In 1966, when BARTS was dissolved, Baraka returned to Newark, his hometown.
In 1966 Amiri married his wife, Amina Baraka, formerly Sylvia Robinson. Together they inaugu rated The Spirit House and the Spirit House Movers that brought drama, music and poetry from across the country into Newark. During this period, the Baraka’s founded the Committee for Unified Newark (CFUN) and the Congress of Afrikan People. Both CFUN and the Congress of Afrikan People led the election of Kenneth A. Gibson as the first Black Mayor of a major northeastern city, spear-headed by the 1972 Gary (IN) Convention. In 1968, Baraka co-edited Black Fire: Anthology of Afro –American Writing with Larry Neal.
Also from the union of Amiri and Amina Baraka came five children: Obalaji, Ras, Amiri Jr., Shani and Ahi; and two step-daughters Vera and Wanda Wilson. He also had four daughters from previous relationships: Kellie, Lisa, Maria and Dominque. Amiri and Amina Baraka founded Kimako’s Blues People, a multimedia arts space, from a small theater in their Newark home. Amiri founded the jazz/poetry ensemble Blue Ark which played at the Berlin Festival and throughout the U.S. His jazz opera Money, with Swiss composer George Gruntz, was performed in part at George Wein’s New York Jazz Festival in the early 90’s. Primitive World, with music by David Murray, was also performed in part at Wein’s New York Jazz Festival in the early 90’s, at the Nuyorican Poets’ Café and the Black Drama Festival in Winston Salem, NC. His Bumpy: Bopera, with music by jazz drummer Max Roach, was performed in 1991 at Newark Symphony Hall and at San Diego Repertory Theatre. Amiri founded the New Arkestra, a big band working to produce a living archive of this music. In the fall of 2002, Baraka, who had been named New Jersey Poet Laureate by then Governor James McGreevy, came under fire from the New Jersey Office of the Anti-Defamation League, the New Jersey Assembly and others after a reading of his controversial poem Somebody Blew Up America about the 9/11 attacks. After reading the poem at the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation’s annual poetry festival in Stanhope, NJ, Baraka’s $10,000 stipend was rescinded and the Poet Laureate position eliminated in 2003 by Governor McGreevy who resigned in disgrace in 2004. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear Baraka’s case in which he asserted that his First Amendment Rights were violated. Baraka bounced back from the melee and remained a figure in demand at international festivals, book fairs and on university campuses. Baraka was also the Poet Laureate of the Newark Public Schools, appointed by the former Superintendent Marion Bolden in 2002. Amiri Baraka taught at Yale University, Rutgers University and George Washington University and spent 20 years on the faculty of the State University of New York in Stony Brook. He received numerous grants and prizes including a Guggenheim fellowship and a poetry award from the National Endowment for the Arts; and numerous literary honors including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Rockefeller Foundation Award for Drama, the Langston Hughes Award from The City College of New York and a lifetime achievement award from the Before Columbus Foundation. In 1994, he retired as Professor of Africana Studies at the State University of New York in Stony Brook. He was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1995. Amiri and Amina Baraka edited The Music: Meditations of Jazz & Blues (Morrow) and Confirmation: An Anthology of African-American Women, which won an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones/ Amiri Baraka was published in 1984. Other publications include Y’s/Why’s/Wise (3rd World 1992) Funk Lore (Littoral 1993), Eulogies (Marsilio, 1994), Transbluesency (Marsilio 1996) and Somebody Blew Up America & Other Poems (Nehesi 2002). In January 2007, his award-winning, one-act play, Dutchman, was revived at the new Cherry Lane Theatre in New York and received critical acclaim and international attention. His book of short stories, Tales of the Out and the Gone was published in late 2007. Home, his book of social essays, was re-released by Akashic Books in early 2009. Digging: The Afro American Soul of American Classical Music (Univ. of California) was also released in 2009. The Before Columbus Foundation selected Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music as a winner of the 31st Annual American Book Awards for 2010. In 2012, Baraka received the Jazz Journalists Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Amiri leaves to cherish his memory, his wife of 47 years, Amina Baraka; Sons: Obalaji, Ras, Amiri Jr. and Ahi; Daughters: Kellie, Lisa, Dominque, Maria, Vera and Wanda; Grandchildren: Doreathia, Ramel, Layla, Malia, Raisa, Assata, Shani, Shayla and Destiny; Great Grandchildren: Jamir and Mica and a host of nieces, nephews, cousins and friends.