My New Black Magazine - NYU Black Renaissance Noire BRN-FALL-206 ISSUE RELEASE | 页面 46

…So Digging means to
present , perhaps arbitrarily,
varied paradigms of this
essentially Afro-American
art. The common predicate,
myself, the Digger. One who
gets down, with the down,
always looking above to see
what is going out, and so
check Digitaria, as the Dogon
say, necessary if you are the
fartherest Star, Serious. So
this book is a microscope, a
telescope, and being Black, a
periscope. All to dig what is
deeply serious. From a variety
of places,,,the intention is
to provide some theoretical
and observed practice of the
historical essence of what is
clearly American Classical
Music, no matter the various
names it, and we, have been
called. The sun is what keeps
the planet alive, including the
Music, like we say, the Soul of
which is Black.
Kofi Natambu
Berkeley, California
April 9, 2014
(Paul Robeson’s 116th birthday)

Bibliography of published music
criticism by Amiri Baraka
(aka Leroi Jones): 1963-2009
Blues People: Negro Music in White
America, by Leroi Jones. William
Morrow, 1963
Black Music, by Leroi Jones. William
Morrow and Company, 1968 
The Music: Reflections On Jazz
and Blues, by Amiri Baraka and
Amina Baraka. William Morrow and
Company, 1987
Digging: The Afro-American Soul of
American Classical Music, by Amiri
Baraka. University of California

BLACK RENAISSANCE NOIRE

Finally Digging is an intense, wide
ranging, and deeply philosophical and
scholarly meditation on, and relentless
excavation of, the multidimensional
aspects of the music’s varied diasporic
genealogies, and a celebration of its
ongoing presence and importance on
both a national and global level.
Amiri incorporates everything he has
learned and experienced in both the
music and his life (and their endless
interconnections). This synergy of the
personal and aesthetic gives the book
an organic unity and focus that shapes
and informs the text as the essays strive
to fuse an understanding of politics,
history, ideology, and art with a larger
vision of “what it all means.” He
confronts this complicated task and
handles it beautifully in such sage and
critical essays as “The ‘Blues Aesthetic
and the Black Aesthetic: Aesthetics
as the Continuing Political History
of a Culture’, ‘Jazz Criticism and Its
Effects On the Music,’ ‘Black Music
As A Force for Social Change,’ ‘Bopera
Theory,’ “Jazz and the White Critic:
Thirty Years Later,” “Newark’s “Coast”
and the Hidden Legacy of Urban
Culture,’ ‘Blues People: Looking Both
Ways,’ ‘Miles Later,’ and ‘Griot/Djali:
Poetry, Music, History, message,’‘Cosby
and the Music,’ and “The American
Popular Song: The Great American Song

Book’ among others. In other words
no one has written about American
music with a wider, deeper, and more
informed love, understanding and
knowledge than Amiri Baraka/Leroi
Jones. Noone else has captured what this
music means to the artists who create it
and the millions of blues people/citizens
from all over the world who listen,
dance, sing and live their lives to and
with it. On this and much much more
besides, Amiri has — as always — the
‘last word’ (for now) on the subject:

45

In this quest Digging joyously and
fastidiously examines the work,
philosophy, craft, and vision of such
giants as John Coltrane, Duke
Ellington, Wayne Shorter, Miles Davis,
Nina Simone, David Murray, Art
Tatum, Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln,
Billie Holiday, Albert Ayler, Eric
Dolphy, Andrew Cyrille, Barry Harris,
James Moody, Jackie McLean, Sarah
Vaughan, Stevie Wonder, Roscoe
Mitchell, Fred Hopkins, Pharoah
Sanders, Charles Tolliver, Odean Pope,
John Hicks, Von Freeman, Jimmy
Scott, and Reggie Workman (whew!).
Baraka also writes with great insight,
intellige nce, and passion about such
exciting and important emerging
musicians and composers of the past
two decades as Vijay Iyer, Rodney
Kendrick, Ralph Peterson, Jon Jang,
and Ravi Coltrane.