I am almost ashamed to say that I did not remember that Amiri Baraka’s Blues People: Negro Music in White America
Here and Here. Baraka lays down the hard fact of the heavy learning mojo that the late Sterling A. Brown put on him (and Toni Morrison, A.B. Spellman, Lucille Clifton, Thomas Sowell and many others). These are writers and thinkers that inform who I am today so I through them (and his work as well) I have come to a greater appreciation for Sterling A. Brown.
This appreciation becomes even more significant as I think about the my recent family reunion down in the heart of Gullah/Geechee land (Coastal South Carolina), I am remind that I am part of the Blues People Continuum or as Dr. Tony Bolden put it the “blues network.”( his book is called Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture
I like the fact that Dr. Bolden’s makes space in the “blues network” for all forms of “African American vernacular culture” beyond just music, because this is the foundation for some of the new projects that I have coming up. This kind of grounding will be the perfect marriage of my current obsessions.
Thank you Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) for the work…to be continued