Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Recorded at the public debut of David Murray's Big Band at the Public Theatre, New York, 2 July 1978, this audience recording features Baraka in a trio with Murray on tenor saxophone and bassist Fred Hopkins, reading a poem from 'The Dead Lecturer' (1964). Baraka, Murray and Steve McCall made the album 'New Music-New Poetry' in 1982: this is a rare recording of Baraka recording material from an earlier phase in his career.
The poem is dedicated to Robert F. Williams, president of the Monroe, NC chapter of the NAACP, author of 'Negroes with Guns,' and an early advocate of armed resistance against white supremacy of the KKK. Williams went into exile after an attack from white racists, for which he and fellow defendant Mae Mallory were, with the distortion typical of the US imperial state, falsely accused of kidnapping a white couple who had taken shelter with them. The year before, Baraka and Williams were part of a delegation organised by the Fair Play to Cuba Committee who took a trip to Cuba in July 1960, a story Baraka tells in the essay 'Cuba Libre', which marked an important stage in his political coming to consciousness. The cause of Williams and his fellow defendant, Mae Mallory, who remained in the US, was also taken up in benefit readings by the Umbra Poets' Workshop. From Cuba, Williams broadcast the show 'Radio Free Dixie' and continued to agitate against white supremacy, and to link the struggles against colonialism and neo-colonialism in Cuba and on the African and Asian continents to the struggle against US racism. Williams' story is told Timothy B. Tyson's book 'Radio Free Dixie' (1999).
From the poem:
"For the well that marks the burned stores. For the deadly idiot of compromise
who shrieks compassion, and bids me love my neighbor. Even beyond the meaning
of such act as would give all my father's dead ash to fertilize their bilious
land. Such act as would give me legend, "This is the man who saved us
Spared us from the disappearance of the sixteenth note, the destruction
of the scale. This is the man who against the black pits of despairing genius
cried, "Save the Popular Song." [...]
I am not moved. I will not move to save them. There is no
"melody." Only the foot stomped, the roaring harmonies of need. The
hand banged on the table, waved in the air. The teeth pushed against
the lip. The face and fingers sweating. "Let me alone," is praise enough
for these musicians."
Offered solely for educational purposes: please let me know if this infringes anyone's copyright, and I'll remove.
Recorded at the public debut of David Murray's Big Band at the Public Theatre, New York, 2 July 1978, this audience recording features Baraka in a trio with Murray on tenor saxophone and bassist Fred Hopkins, reading a poem from 'The Dead Lecturer' (1964). Baraka, Murray and Steve McCall made the album 'New Music-New Poetry' in 1982: this is a rare recording of Baraka recording material from an earlier phase in his career.
The poem is dedicated to Robert F. Williams, president of the Monroe, NC chapter of the NAACP, author of 'Negroes with Guns,' and an early advocate of armed resistance against white supremacy of the KKK. Williams went into exile after an attack from white racists, for which he and fellow defendant Mae Mallory were, with the distortion typical of the US imperial state, falsely accused of kidnapping a white couple who had taken shelter with them. The year before, Baraka and Williams were part of a delegation organised by the Fair Play to Cuba Committee who took a trip to Cuba in July 1960, a story Baraka tells in the essay 'Cuba Libre', which marked an important stage in his political coming to consciousness. The cause of Williams and his fellow defendant, Mae Mallory, who remained in the US, was also taken up in benefit readings by the Umbra Poets' Workshop. From Cuba, Williams broadcast the show 'Radio Free Dixie' and continued to agitate against white supremacy, and to link the struggles against colonialism and neo-colonialism in Cuba and on the African and Asian continents to the struggle against US racism. Williams' story is told Timothy B. Tyson's book 'Radio Free Dixie' (1999).
From the poem:
"For the well that marks the burned stores. For the deadly idiot of compromise
who shrieks compassion, and bids me love my neighbor. Even beyond the meaning
of such act as would give all my father's dead ash to fertilize their bilious
land. Such act as would give me legend, "This is the man who saved us
Spared us from the disappearance of the sixteenth note, the destruction
of the scale. This is the man who against the black pits of despairing genius
cried, "Save the Popular Song." [...]
I am not moved. I will not move to save them. There is no
"melody." Only the foot stomped, the roaring harmonies of need. The
hand banged on the table, waved in the air. The teeth pushed against
the lip. The face and fingers sweating. "Let me alone," is praise enough
for these musicians."
Offered solely for educational purposes: please let me know if this infringes anyone's copyright, and I'll remove.
