The Movement Magazine REMIXED - A Tribute to Amiri Baraka

www.EtchedInStonePublications.com

Remixed

POET JESSICA CARE MORE

NEWARK NEW JERSEY WAS PROUD TO CALL AMIRI ONE OF ITS OWN.

HYCIDE

SUBCULTURE ART CONFLICT F R E E

Tr i b u t e t o a L e g e n d ONLINE ONLY

APOLLO THEATRE HELD THE MEMORIAL

Etched in Stone Publications Recommends Amiri Baraka entire Library of his Published works

AMIRI BARAKA

OCTOBER 7, 1934 - JANUARY 9, 2014

The Baraka FAMILY

Literature/ Movements / Music / Fashion/Red Carpets

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Amiri Baraka The dramatist, novelist and poet, Amiri Baraka is one of the most respected and widely published African-American writers.

A National Treasure Fighting for a cause Trying to be on hand to help his son rally the city for change with consciousness, courage, creativity and dignity the way his generation did to unseat the gangster segregationists of that time Page 3

Issue N° 17 — Fall 2009 Jessica Care Moore “When he stepped into the room, you knew that all the bullshit just went out the window and the real poetry was about to begin,” Page 4

HYCIDE Magazine RISE IN POWER KING: World renown revolutionary, poet and activist Amiri Baraka @ the first HYCIDE magazine launch party about to read.

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The Legendary Apollo

The Apollo Theatre held a beautiful memorial for Amiri Baraka Page 6

A country in black & white, newspapers blown down pavements of the world.

Does not feel what I am.

Like Father Like Sons AMIRI BARAKA with his pride and joy. Ras, Obalachi and Middy his sons.

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light on my fingers move under her clothes.

Notes for a Speech African blues does not know me. Their steps, in sands of their own land.

The Movement Magazine It is a great honor for our National Publication to put together a tribute to such a positive and gifted individual that touched so many lives throughout the years.

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locked in hate, of hate, of hate, to walk abroad, they conduct their deaths apart from my own.

Those heads, I call my "people."

(And who are they. People. To concern myself, ugly man.)

Where is her husband.

Black words throw up sand to eyes, fingers of their private dead.

Whose soul, eyes, in sand. My color is not theirs. Lighter, white man talk.

They shy away.

My own dead souls, my, so called people. Africa is a foreign place.

You are as any other sad man here american.

Who you, to concern the white flat Strength in the dream, an oblique - Amiri Baraka stomachs of maidens, inside suckling of nerve, the wind throws houses dying. Black. Peeled moon www.AmiriBaraka.com up sand, eyes are something www.TheMovementMagazine.net

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In conjunction with the “AfriCOBRA in Chicago: Philosophy” exhibit at the Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago, South Side Projections will present two more nights of free screenings providing a wider context to the Black Arts Movement. The August 2nd screenings will take an inside look at the dayto-day struggles and realities of poets Sarah W. Fabio and Amiri Baraka as they stretch the boundaries of politics and artistic expression. - by Shariff Staff

His father is in ICU fighting for his life right now!...Fighting for his life!...Trying to be on hand to help his son rally the city for change with consciousness, courage, creativity and dignity the way his generation did to unseat the gangster segregationists of that time...Ras has every right to take a temporary retreat from his public obligations to cover down on his father...But that is not what he comes from...If Amiri is continuing to fight from an intensive care hospital bed, and Ras continues to stand up and fight with his father on an intensive care hospital bed, who the hell are we to back up, slow down, take a time out or even worse give up?!!...Stand with Ras!...Long live the Imamu!...Long live Amiri Baraka!

Rally with Ras tomorrow!...Sunday, 3pm...For Peace! in the Streets!...

www.TheMovementMagazine.com

"I’m going to call on the conscientious individuals of this community and the people who are out here in these streets to put down their guns," Baraka said Saturday. "I’m going to make a plea."

Baraka has scheduled a press conference for 2 p.m. Sunday on North 7th Street with the mother of Kasson Mormon, one of the two teenagers killed Christmas night to call for a cease-fire among the city’s gangs.

"Hopefully, at some point, we can have a more serious and in-depth program in the worst areas of our city that resembles what’s going on in Brooklyn and Boston," Baraka said, referring to programs in those cities that target chronic gang offenders with an increased threat of law enforcement along with genuine rewards for giving up criminal life.

It is not the first time Baraka has sought to mediate gang flare-ups. In 2004 he helped broker a temporary gang truce signed by more than 150 gang members of sets from the Crips and Bloods in Newark.

- BaBa Zayid

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Amiri Baraka & Jessica Care More Poet revolutionary Amiri Baraka joined the ancestors Jan. 9. Baraka was a writer who expanded Black American consciousness and influenced multiple generations of artists, teachers, activists, intellectuals and leaders. Baraka resided in his hometown and birthplace Newark, N.J., when he passed. He was 79.

“He’s essential for American literature,” says Jessica Care Moore, Detroit’s beloved poet and friend of Baraka. “He’s been a heavy influence in my life personally. His family means a lot to me.” She will be speaking on behalf of Baraka’s legacy at his memorial service Jan.18 at the Newark Symphony Hall.

“When he stepped into the room, you knew that all the bullshit just went out the window and the real poetry was about to begin,” Moore told the Michigan Citizen. “You can’t be pretentious around Amiri Baraka; you have to show up.”

Over the years, Baraka offered his mentorship to many great young poets of the era, including Moore.

While earning her own celebrity as a poet in New York City during the 90s, she had the pleasure of knowing Baraka. Through his guidance she learned her own poetry to be in the same lineage as his, a responsibility she carries to this day.

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Amiri Baraka’s impact on modern poetry is immeasurable, having established his reputation under his given name LeRoi Jones in the 50s and early 60s. He attended Rutgers and Howard University and served in the U.S. Air Force from 1954-1957, after which he moved to Greenwich Village where he befriended the Beat Generation poets. His 1964 play “Dutchman” won an Obie Award for Best American Play, earning him international fame. Baraka was a husband, father and a voice for workers and Black America during the Civil Rights era. He inspired writers, musicians, journalists and filmmakers with his truth of the human experience, no matter the receiver’s race, creed or nationality.

“He was very, very popular within the Beat culture movement and definitely within the Black culture movement. That’s what’s very interesting about Amiri — he’s affected so many different circles,” 4

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said Moore, reflecting on the numerous phone calls she has shared with contemporary poets around the world in the days since Baraka’s passing.

Detroit.’ My daddy comes from the working class Detroit, I’m from that working class city. I’m trying to explain myself to this legend.»

Following the assassination of Malcolm X, Baraka founded the Black Arts Movement in Harlem in 1965 with cooperation from writers like Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez and Maya Angelou. “The Black Arts Movement of the 60s basically wanted to reflect the rise of the militancy of the Black masses as represented by Malcolm X,” said Baraka in his book “Daggers and Javelins” published in 1984. “Its political line, at its most positive, was that literature must be a weapon of revolutionary struggle, that it must serve the black revolution.”

Baraka’s son, Ras Baraka, now a top candidate in 2014 Newark mayoral campaign, is also a friend of Moore. Her company, Moore Black Press, published his book “Black Girls Learn Love Hard” in 2006. Her book “God is not an American,” self published in 2009, features poems dedicated to Baraka.

Let there be no love poems written until love can exist freely and cleanly. Let Black people understand that they are the lovers and the sons of warriors and sons of warriors Are poems & poets & all the loveliness here in the world — Amiri Baraka, “Black Art” In July 1967, Newark was the next city to erupt in the Black urban uprisings. The rebellion flooded the streets for a week. Baraka was beaten by a policeman and arrested. A photograph from the riot surfaced of him dazed and bloodied. He became more impassioned against the systemic white supremacy within the country, and his focus evolved toward Black Nationalism followed by “Third World Marxism.”

Emboldened in his African identity, he changed his name from LeRoi Jones to Amiri Baraka in 1968 and aligned himself and his poetry more strongly with the global anti-colonial rebellions of the era. The FBI identified Baraka as “the person who will probably emerge as the leader of the Pan-African movement African blues does not know me. Their steps, in in the United States.” He would consistently evolve sands of their own land. A country in black & white, ahead of the mainstream cultural movements of his newspapers blown down pavements of the world. generation, challenging everyone to move past their Does not feel what I am. own ideology.

— Amiri Baraka, “Notes for a Speech”

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“On the negative side,” Baraka wrote, “the Black Arts Movement … became embroiled in cultural nationalism, bourgeois nationalism, substituting mistrust and hatred of white people for scientific analysis of the real enemies of black people, until by the middle seventies a dead end had been reached that could only be surmounted by a complete change of worldview, ideology.”

Baraka would become a prolific writer and speaker, publishing and reading for audiences worldwide.

He offered his mentorship to today’s younger poets including Care Moore and her contemporaries like Saul Williams and Ursula Rucker. Each gained their own celebrity in New York City during the 90s.

“I got to know him in a more tangible way in New York City, and got to go to his house and do work.

To be able to share a drink with him at a local bar in Newark,” said Moore. “He looked up at me and said ‘where is you from jessica, where is you from?’ And I was like ‘I’m from Detroit, Amiri, I’m from

“It’s funny because people describe (Amiri) kind of like this grumpy old man, but he was always so tender with me, always very sweet,” she said. “In Atlanta, we were working the National Black Arts Festival in August (2013). I walked into the hotel and he was sitting in the lobby. I said ‘oh perfect, what are you doing?’ and he said ‘I’m waiting on my room, my room is not ready.’ So we got to sit there and talk, and got to talk for like an hour about everything under the sun. And it just so happened, I thought, in my carry-on was the book ‘Razor’ that he gave to me as a gift in Detroit. It was the one book I was carrying. I said ‘guess what I’ve got on me?’ He said ‘my work?’ I said ‘yup.’ He said ‘is it signed?’ I said ‘nope.’ So I pulled it out, he signed it the way he always signs it, ‘The World Belongs To Us.’ And he tore it down at the National Black Arts Festival; it was amazing.

“Amiri was one of the most warm, beautiful people I’ve ever met in my life,” said Moore.

In eulogy to James Baldwin in 1987, Baraka delivered words fitting of his own legacy. “He was in the truest tradition of the great artists of all times.

Those who understand it is beauty and truth we seek, and that indeed one cannot exist without and as an extension of the other.”

Said Moore, “There’s some of us who know we’re directly the metaphorical daughters and sons of Amiri and Sonia (Sanchez) and (Jayne) Cortez and Gil Scott (Heron) and the Last Poets, that we literally come from them and feel connected to them in a very deep way. So this thing that I do has never been a game for me, like they talk about the hip hop game. No, I’m not that hip hop, I come from a tradition of something. I’ve always been in line with tradition, and everything that’s comes with that.

“That’s what Amiri is, it’s like a big hole in the universe right now.”

The memorial service on Saturday in Newark will draw literary and political dignitaries from across the globe, and Jessica Care Moore will share words with her friends and beloved peers. Amiri Baraka evolved with every new era— his love overcoming any harbored bitterness for America’s most wicked paradox of oppression of Black and native peoples.

As the unraveling of this paradox continues, a new generation of poets and politicians are responsible for narrating the evolution in the place of Amiri Baraka. mooreblackpress.com www.AmiriBaraka.com

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Editor in Chief of Hycide Magazine - Akintola Hanif with Amiri Baraka before his poetry reading at the Magazine launch party

RISE IN POWER KING: World renown revolutionary, poet and activist Amiri Baraka @ the first HYCIDE magazine launch party about to read.

This man was a dear friend to my Father and a great inspiration and guide to many generations [my sincere condolences go out to the entire Baraka family] For a lot of people Amiri Baraka was an angel, a prophet, a leader, revolutionary, father figure, etc but for a lot of us here he was simply "Mr. Baraka" a neighborhood staple that we knew was a legend but just felt like "Pops" I would often run into him at the local dives and he was always the same: quiet/ reserved, unless prompted, but super cool and humble when approached. A real OG and veteran of all that we "conscious" folk seek to do now. You will truly be missed King.

me feel a little bad but he lived a full life and I'm sure he's at peace now. The honor of having him read/ help introduce the first Hycide Magazine to the world is an inspiring memory that I'll never forget because it is in this (his) rebellious (revolutionary) spirit that we do this work. Such an honor to have this man as a family friend (as a child) and then to connect with him as a man (on a serious note)

shockingly creative way to begin seeing the 21st century, on the real side." ~Amiri Barak

www.hycide.com

HYCIDE BABY: NO MATTER WHAT WE DO WE VOW TO STAY TRUE "HYCIDE, the innovative Newark-based magazine, is a Hip Hop Superstar from the legendary Group Naughty By Nature - Treach had tremendous love an respect for Amiri Baraka

Knowing that I'll never see him again makes www.TheMovementMagazine.net

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Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note Lately, I've become accustomed to the way The ground opens up and envelopes me Each time I go out to walk the dog.

Or the broad edged silly music the wind Makes when I run for a bus...

Things have come to that.

And now, each night I count the stars.

And each night I get the same number.

And when they will not come to be counted, I count the holes they leave.

Nobody sings anymore.

And then last night I tiptoed up To my daughter's room and heard her Talking to someone, and when I opened The door, there was no one there...

Only she on her knees, peeking into Her own clasped hands - AMIRI BARAKA

When I die, the consciousness I carry I will to Founder/Editor in Chief of The Movement Magazine with the Legendary Amiri Baraka “It was truly a Blessing to be in the presence of such greatness, Amiri Baraka will forever be missed, he was a National Treasure, and Newark, New Jersey called him their own.”

- Egypt

black people. May they pick me apart and take the useful parts, the sweet meat of my feelings. And leave the bitter bullshit rotten white parts alone.

— Amiri Baraka, “leroy”

l i t e r a t u r e

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AMIRI BARAKA, NEWARK, JULY 1967

DURING THE NEWARK RIOTS, THE COPS GANGED UP ON JONES, WHO HAD CHANGED HIS NAME TO AMIRI BARAKA BY THIS POINT. THE CHARGE WAS CARRYING AN ILLEGAL WEAPON AND RESISTING ARREST THAT WAS LATER DROPPED. HIS REAL CRIME WAS BEING A BLACK MILITANT.

With the beginning of Black Civil Rights Movements during the sixties, Baraka explored the anger of AfricanAmericans and used his writings as a weapon against racism. Also, he advocated scientific socialism with his revolutionary inclined poems and aimed at creating aesthetic through them.

Amiri Baraka’s writing career spans nearly fifty years and has mostly focused on the subjects of Black Liberation and White Racism. Today, a number of well known poems, short stories, plays and commentaries on society, music and literature are associated with his name. A few of the famous ones include, ‘The Music: Reflection on Jazz and Blues’, ‘The Book of Monk’ and ‘New Music, New Poetry’ among others.

The literary world respects the playwright and poet, Amiri Baraka as one of the revolutionary provocateurs of African-American poetry. He is counted among the few influential political activists who have spent most of their life time fighting for the rights of African-Americans.

Danny Glover

Bill Cobb

Celebrities from near and far were very impressed by our National hero, he was just as important to them as he was to us.

Mya Angelou

All of these men stood for the most powerful movements that were instrumental in allowing us as black people to move forward in a positive manner. Standing on their shoulders and we still have a very long way to go.

The New World

By Amiri Baraka The sun is folding, cars stall and rise beyond the window.

The workmen leave the street to the bums and painters’ wives pushing their babies home.

Those who realize how fitful and indecent consciousness is stare solemnly out on the emptying street.

The mourners and soft singers.

The liars, and seekers after ridiculous righteousness.

All my doubles, and friends, whose mistakes cannot be duplicated by machines, and this is all of our arrogance.

Being broke or broken, dribbling at the eyes.

Wasted lyricists, and men who have seen their dreams come true, only seconds after they knew those dreams to be horrible conceits and plastic fantasies of gesture and extension, shoulders, hair and tongues distributing misinformation about the nature of understanding.

No one is that simple or priggish, to be alone out of spite and grown strong in its practice, mystics in two-pants suits.

Our style, and discipline, controlling the method of knowledge.

Beatniks, like Bohemians, go calmly out of style. And boys are dying in Mexico, who did not get the word.

The lateness of their fabrication: mark their holes with filthy needles.

The lust of the world.

This will not be news.

The simple damning lust, float flat magic in low changing evenings. Shiver your hands in dance.

Empty all of me for knowing, and will the danger of identification, Let me sit and go blind in my dreaming and be that dream in purpose and device.

A fantasy of defeat, a strong strong man older, but no wiser than the defect of love.

Ka'Ba "A closed window looks down on a dirty courtyard, and Black people call across or scream across or walk across defying physics in the stream of their will.

Our world is full of sound Our world is more lovely than anyone's tho we suffer, and kill each other and sometimes fail to walk the air.

We are beautiful people With African imaginations full of masks and dances and swelling chants with African eyes, and noses, and arms tho we sprawl in gray chains in a place full of winters, when what we want is sun.

We have been captured, and we labor to make our getaway, into the ancient image; into a new Correspondence with ourselves and our Black family.

We need magic now we need the spells, to raise up return, destroy,and create. What will be the sacred word?

AMIRI BARAKA with his pride and joy. Ras, Obalachi and Middy his sons.