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A review by hikemogan
Blues People by Leroi Jones
5.0
I picked up the 1963 first edition of Blues People in a used bookstore. Many of the themes running through Baraka's book still feel relevant in the 21st century as we face down renewed crises of racism and a stifling capitalistic focus in our culture.
Amiri Baraka (then Leroi Jones) traces the musical ancestry of jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock music back to the first slave ships to land in North America. In doing so, he also weaves into the narrative an examination of black Americans' history from "day one" as being a history set apart from the cultural, social, and value norms of mainstream American culture. Early in Blues People, Baraka wrote about what distinguished many black slaves in America from their enslaved counterparts throughout history (west Africa, Rome, Greece, Babylon, etc.) was that the black slave in America wasn't even considered human in the ways that whites understood the word. They were thought of as a a piece of property, a sub-species, certainly not "equal" to the white man in any way. As such, they could never blend into society through time and exposure the way Italians or the Irish quickly did. With this mindset, acculturation and assimilation of slaves and ex-slaves into American society was impossible. In turn, that dominant society paradoxically expressed extreme hostility that assimilation did not occur and on the other hand used any manner of coercion to ensure it couldn't happen. Baraka writes: "It is absurd to assume, as has been the tendency, among a great many Western anthropologists and sociologists, that all traces of Africa were erased from the Negro's mind because he learned English." The resulting cultural, social, and value differences, claims Baraka, persist in white and in black communities to this day. Those differences can be seen in the evolution of one of America's greatest artistic contributions to the world: jazz and rock n' roll music.
The notion of being a permanent outsider is a theme that runs from Baraka's discussion of early conceptions of black society in America up until the end of the book where he discusses art, artists, and bohemian lifestyles being in direct opposition to America's pervasive money-minded "economic sensibility." Though he was talking about the late 1950s and early 1960s, it's not hard to superimpose the themes and history examined in this book onto the world today.
Amiri Baraka (then Leroi Jones) traces the musical ancestry of jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock music back to the first slave ships to land in North America. In doing so, he also weaves into the narrative an examination of black Americans' history from "day one" as being a history set apart from the cultural, social, and value norms of mainstream American culture. Early in Blues People, Baraka wrote about what distinguished many black slaves in America from their enslaved counterparts throughout history (west Africa, Rome, Greece, Babylon, etc.) was that the black slave in America wasn't even considered human in the ways that whites understood the word. They were thought of as a a piece of property, a sub-species, certainly not "equal" to the white man in any way. As such, they could never blend into society through time and exposure the way Italians or the Irish quickly did. With this mindset, acculturation and assimilation of slaves and ex-slaves into American society was impossible. In turn, that dominant society paradoxically expressed extreme hostility that assimilation did not occur and on the other hand used any manner of coercion to ensure it couldn't happen. Baraka writes: "It is absurd to assume, as has been the tendency, among a great many Western anthropologists and sociologists, that all traces of Africa were erased from the Negro's mind because he learned English." The resulting cultural, social, and value differences, claims Baraka, persist in white and in black communities to this day. Those differences can be seen in the evolution of one of America's greatest artistic contributions to the world: jazz and rock n' roll music.
The notion of being a permanent outsider is a theme that runs from Baraka's discussion of early conceptions of black society in America up until the end of the book where he discusses art, artists, and bohemian lifestyles being in direct opposition to America's pervasive money-minded "economic sensibility." Though he was talking about the late 1950s and early 1960s, it's not hard to superimpose the themes and history examined in this book onto the world today.