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Friday, April 13
4:00 p.m.
Case Study 2
(412 Student Union) .

(April 13, 2007)

Jazz is essential to Amiri Baraka’s life as both an artist and critic. As a poet he is inspired by the greats of jazz, from Louis Armstrong to Duke Ellington to Albert Ayler and John Coltrane. He feels that these artists have set the bar high, having been inventive, original and profound in a way no other American art form has been able to manage. In his poems he attempts to translate poetry into jazz. This occurs both in his written poems and his performance poems; in both he tries to embody the cadences, movements and musical ideas of contemporary jazz, bebop and free jazz, in particular. I will show the “jazz” in his poetry by reading his poems, playing his performances pieces and comparing them to compositions by his favorite musician-composers. His jazz books, such as BLUES PEOPLE and THE MUSIC, aren’t only scholarly histories but are also Griot (African storyteller) tales, tales of the African American people. Like Ralph Ellison and Nathaniel Mackey, he believes music is as precious to him as air because he cannot live without either. In short, jazz is precious for Baraka because it embodies the story of his people and himself.

Professor Harris’s lecture is sponsored by the OSU American Studies Program, the OSU Department of English, and the Center for Africana Studies & Development, and the OSU Music Department (Jazz Studies).

William J. Harris is an associate professor of English at the University of Kansas, specializing in American Literature, African American Literature, jazz studies, American poetry and creative writing. He is the author of The Poetry and Poetics of Amiri Baraka: The Jazz Aesthetic (1985), Hey Fella Would You Mind Holding This Piano a Moment (1974), and In My Own Dark Way (1977). He is the editor or co-editor of The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader (1991, 2000), Call and Response: The Riverside Anthology of African American Literary Tradition (1997) and a double issue of The African American Review on Amiri Baraka (Summer/Fall 2003). He is an editor or advisory editor for The African American Review, mixed blood, the University of Iowa Press Contemporary North American Poetry Series, Penn Sound: Amiri Baraka (website) and Modern American Poetry: Amiri Baraka (website). His awards and fellowships include the College of the Liberal Arts Outstanding Teacher Award (Penn State), and the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship (Harvard University). He is a member of the Jazz Study Group at Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies

For more information contact the English Deparment at 744-9474 or english.information@okstate.edu