There's plenty money in the Black world to fund ANY type of art they
we want. Get ALL BIGGUV out of art. Lint off Michael Jackson's
royalties can fund any every HipHopAmiriBaraka for a century or two.
>Here is the original post that launched the following ones. Also below URLs
>and information re visiting the archives
>
>Chris Hayden
>
>>From: Kalamu ya Salaam <[log in to unmask]>
>>Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
>>To: [log in to unmask]
>>Subject: DIA: amiri baraka responses to kalamu's schomburg report re:
>>felipe luciano
>>*****@topica.com>; Wed, 18 Jul 2001 02:09:59 -0400 (EDT)
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>>============================================================
>>
>>>>DIA: amiri baraka responses to kalamu's schomburg report re: felipe
>>luciano
>>=====================================================
>>
>>Kalamu, I don't understand why you, at this late date, don't seem to
>>understand the relationship of art to politics. Certainly this makes me
>>jumpy
>>re: your oncoming take on The Black Arts Movement.
>> I refer you to what the Good Dr. said, "The seeker of Beauty must
>>of
>>necessity become the seeker of Truth!" That is, there is a clear politics
>>in
>>all art. Or the Dr. again, in rejoinder to McKay's ardent Negrossity, "I
>>don't give a damn for any art that's not propaganda!"
>> But beyond that, don't you have any realistic measure of Felipe
>>Luciano as one of the most moving and historical poets on the set. one of
>>the
>>founders of the Original Last Poets? And that, while being National
>>Chairman
>>of The Young Lords. Neither any sensitivity to the fact that Schomburg was
>>a
>>Puerto Rican? Were there any other Latinos on the program?
>> Plus that doo doo about Felipe lacking "home training", Is you a
>>boxer?
>> What it confirms for me is re: "Black" One Splits into Two!
>> Need I get didactic and tell you the Black Arts Movement was
>>bottom
>>to top political, the problem is that we could not sort out our politics
>>and
>>thought "Black" was a political category that reached beyond its more
>>common
>>identification as a frequency of Light!
>> So One splits in Two!
>> "If (you) decided to vote?" The "infantile leftists" in that very
>>city
>>(NYC) were so militant they exchanged Dinkins for Giuliani, with much the
>>same petty bourgeois anarchist political line. Even on a purely practical
>>tip, Felipe in office means something very positive for the Arts and
>>Artists,
>>as well as the people at large.
>> Even with the arts, Mao's line, "Grasp Politics, Push
>>Production!"
>>is on it! If we can understand that even to strengthen the social economic
>>aesthetic context of the artist's work, the politics of revolutionary
>>democratic struggle is necessary even to produce obvious reforms like
>>such
>>programs as the Schomburg's, venues, grants, publishing, education,
>>employment, gigs,
>> Remember the Schomburg, and most of the venues where most of us
>>work,
>>are Public Institutions, and if we who are supposedly closest to them do
>>not
>>struggle to save and develop them as well as inform, unite with the people
>>to,do so, then we are in big trouble.
>>
>> The Bushwacker's motion toward all but eliminating public funding
>>of
>>the arts and putting it all in the hands of the foundations, the
>>corporations, the wealthy will all but waste most of us. Particularly if we
>>are "Political". It was not principally about the "dirty pictures" that
>>Helms
>>and the right wanted to close up the NEA, &c but to block what public
>>access
>>there is to public funds for the arts!
>> All that to say, for you to be so negatively casual about
>>political
>>struggle amazes me, from you, cause I thought you claimed to be traveling
>>with a different consciousness. Though I must admit your attention to the
>>crassly commercial and bourgeois propagandistic "slams," and that the
>>"erotic" poetry trend that is surfacing, is unsettling, at least, for me.
>> "Slams, Propaganda?" Yeh. From base, the introduction of a compet
>>itive and superficial framework for art is ludicrous and a slippery way of
>>introducing a form of petty capitalism into the very mindset of the
>>artists.
>> Plus, when "yr boy", Russell Simmons gets on HBO with his Weekly
>>"Poetry Slam" program, it will have an effect on younger (and apparently,
>>older) poets, something like the effect the corporate jumping of Rap had.
>>That is to change the focus of much of the work, by setting out a Judas
>>Goat
>>of "success", ie "The Winners", which will become much imitated paradigms
>>for
>>"successful" poetry, as opposed to what we should understand are all art's
>>deeper functions. Yeh, Truth and Beauty!
>> Just as so called "Thug Life" replaced earlier more politically
>>incisive Rap simply by the weight of corporate selection and hype and
>>billion dollar advertising, to raise "the chosen" ie whose records, tours,
>>&c
>>got the biggest bux underneath them!
>>Plus we have already seen the soon to come advent of "The Paul Whiteman of
>>Rap" like there was such named " The King of Jazz", Benny Goodman, "The
>>King
>>of Swing"!
>> I think a great part of the function of the artist is "to force
>>truth
>>and beauty into the world."Like Osireis, Orpheus, to raise the Sun, to
>>bring
>>Light. That's why the Djali were called Gleemen, ( why its a "Glee Club" ,
>>song and story and history) Gleaming, Shine,!
>>("Just because my hair is curly, just because my teeth are pearly, just
>>because i wear a smile on my face, all the time they call me Shine!) As
>>intrinsic part of that smile at the bottom of the world, rising to
>>obliterate
>>that frown at the top.
>> I did find that newspaper article (Real News) with your by-one on
>>the
>>BAM, more on that later. Amiri B
>>
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