Find it on the WBAI Archive: http://archive.wbai.org/show1.php?showid=bbridges
Tune in to CPRMetro at http://cprmetro.blogspot.com on Saturday, January 17 at 10am for the stream of his homegoing services:
WAKE
Friday, January 17, 2014 4:00 - 9:00PM
Metropolitan Baptist Church
149 Springfield Avenue
Newark, New Jersey 07103
973.642.2267
www.mbcnewark.org
www.mbcnewark.org/aboutus/new/directions.php
FUNERAL
Saturday, January 18, 2014 10AM
Newark Symphony Hall
1020 Broad Street
Newark, New Jersey 07102
973.643.8014
www.newarksymphonyhall.org
www.newarksymphonyhall.org/about-directions.php
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For more on Amiri’s life and work: http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/a_f/baraka/baraka.htm
A 2007 interview in which Amiri talks about his life, politics and art, Black-Brown unity and the politics of the day:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4xJDPSSvmqg&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D4xJDPSSvmqg
Democracy Now! tribute to Amiri:
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/1/10/amiri_baraka_1934_2014_poet_playwright
Thanks to African Voices for permission to reprint the following photo and poem, also available online at http://mad.ly/cc1564?pact=19716413686&fe=1. Thanks also to the photographer, JoAnn Cheathan, and the poet, Gha’il Rhodes Benjamin.
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Amiri Baraka
October 7, 1934-January 9, 2014
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| Photo: JoAnn Cheathan. Ellie Charles Artists Award ceremony.
King of Word (for Amiri Baraka’s 75th birthday)
U was never Ordinary Nor stationary Nor regular U was always Using your pen As sword Fighting/ tearing down In-justices in high and low places U was never silent but/ even when u wasn’t sayin’ a word your words spoke endless decades of life and death on pages as permanent as the equations of brownskinned mathematicians encoding sanctuaries of memories in our veins your words a drum never losing tempo escorting us beyond blabbering repertoires of rhetoric U is OUR poet laureate cause can’t nobody slice through the BS like you do uncensored u stand with DIG-nity straight from the gut on your tongue the melody of ancestral footsteps running in horrific discord u say the words the deaf can hear u speak the words that pierce a seeing man’s eyes into blinding truths U 75 now, they tell me but what do that mean with a man moving full steam ahead up/down every avenue all at once boiling bleaching the lies out of his-tories’ illusive fabrications fore you even changed your name it was your name waiting for the change that you came to become you been here always scripting out the next revolution documenting how it went down FOREAL “judge a man by his deeds” the old folks say your deeds ain’t nowhere near done but one thing for sure u was never ordinary u was never hesitant sitting waiting for somebody else to say what needed to be said u was always adding another word to even the score on the wall ……and so it is written U is King of Word cause can’t nobody CHANGE a word u said © 2009 Gha’il Rhodes Benjamin, Let Loose on the World Anthology  |
