Head in the clouds he'd have said of himself, she'd have said elsewhere, his to be above and below, not know or say, hers to be alibi, elegy otherwise

Song of the Andoumboulou: 50

by Nathaniel Mackey

-ring of the well- Fray was the name where we came to next. Might've been a place, might not've been a place but we were there, came to it sooner than we could se... Come to so soon, it was a name we stuck pins in hoping we'd stay. Stray was all we ended up with. Spar was another name we heard it went by... Rasp we also heard it was called... Came to it sooner than we could see but soon enough saw we were there. Some who'd come before us called it Bray... Sound's own principality it was, a pocket of air flexed mouthlike, meaning's mime and regret, a squib of something said, so intent it seemed. At our backs a blown conch, bamboo flute, trapic remnant, Lone Coast reconnoiter come up empty but for that, a first, forgotten warble trafficked in again even so, the mango seed's reminder sent to what end we'd eventually see... We had Come thru there before we were told. Others claiming to be us had come thru... The ubiquitous two lay bound in cloth come down from on high, hoping it so, twist of their raiment steep integument, emollient feel for what might not have been there. Head in the clouds he'd have said of himself, she'd have said elsewhere, his to be above and below, not know or say, hers to be alibi, elegy otherwise known... have said elsernrheren Above and below, limbo what fabric intervened. Limbo the bending they moved in between. Limbo the book of the bent knee... Antiphonal thread attended by thread. Keening string by thrum, inwardness, netherness... Violin strings tied their hair high, limbo the headrags they wore... The admission of cloth that it was cover, what was imminent out of reach, given what went for real, unreal, split, silhouetted redress

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	Artist	Song	Album	Label
	Louis Armstrong	West End Blues	Louis Armstrong & Earl Hines	Pathe-Marconi (France)
	Louis Armstrong & Earl Hines	Weather Bird	Louis Armstrong & Earl Hines	Pathe-Marconi (France)
	Earl Hines	A Monday Date	Earl Hines Solo	Columbia
	Earl Hines	Piano Man	Earl Hines & His Grand Terrace Orchestra	RCA
	Maynard Ferguson	That Jones Boy	Birdland Dream Band	Fresh Sounds
	George Russell	All About Rosie	The Birth of the Third Stream	Columbia
	Shorty Rogers	Diablo's Dance	Shorty Rogers & His Giants	RCA
	Charles Mingus	Gunslinging Bird	Mingus Dynasty	Columbia
	Ntozake Shange	Sorry	For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf	Buddha Records
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Count Basie	Little Pony	Count Basie & His Orchestra	Columbia
	Duke Ellington	Primpin' for the Prom	Primpin' for the Prom	RCA - France
	Sarah Vaughn & Billy Eckstine	I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm	The Irving Berlin Song Book	Mercury
	Sarah Vaughn	Let's Call the Whole Thing Off	Sings Gershwin	Mercury
	Langston Hughes	Horn of Plenty	Black America Vol. 5 / The Black Verse	Buddha Records Sunday Series
	Miles Davis	Blue X-Mas (To Whom it May Concern)	Jingle Bell Jazz	Columbia
	Carolina Shout	James P. Johnson	James P. Johnson	Columbia
	Carolina Shout	Fats Waller	Fats Waller Solos	RCA
	I'm Crazy About My Baby	Fats Waller	Fats Waller Sings & Plays	RCA
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Gigi Gryce featuring Clifford Brown	Brown Skins	Gigi Gryce Orchestra	Vogue
	Gigi Gryce featuring Clifford Brown	Deltitnu	Gigi Gryce Orchestra	Vogue
	Zoot Sims	Slingin' Hasch	Zoot Sims Quartet	Vogue
	Woody Herman	Four Brothers	Woody Herman Orchestra	Columbia
	Claude Thornhill	Yardbird Suite	Claude Thornhill Orchestra	Fresh Sounds
	Langton Hughes	Bird in Orbit	Black America Vol. 5 / The Black Verse	Buddha Records Sunday Series
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Modern Jazz Quartet	The Jasmine Tree	Under the Jasmine Tree	Apple
	Bob Brookmeyer	Jive Hoot	Bob Brookmeyer & Friends	Columbia
	Michel Legrand	Jitterbug Waltz	Legrand Jazz	Columbia
	Mary Lou Williams	Perdido	In London	Vogue
	Mary Lou Williams	Kool Bongo	In London	Vogue
	Edward Brathwaite (Kamau Brathwaite)	The Emigrants	Rights of Passage	Argo
	Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble	Tutankhamen (solo by Malachi Favors)	Congliptious	Nessa
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Bessie Jones	Beggin' the Blues	Roots of the Blues	New World Records
	Rose Hemphill	Rolled & Tumbled	Roots of the Blues	New World Records
	Ntozake Shange	Abortion Cycle # 1	For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf	Buddah Records
	Ntozake Shange	One	For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf	Buddah Records
	Kain	Black Amazon Fire Engine Cry Baby	The Blue Guerrilla	Juggernaut Records
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Joseph Jarman	Black Paladins (poem by Henry Dumas)	Black Paladins	Black Saint
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Joseph Jarman	Ginger Song	Black Paladins	Black Saint

Telling It Like It Is, with Daruis Jones & Paul Mooney

Show description for Sunday 11/27/2011 @ 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

We are honored this afternoon on New Day Jazz to welcome one of the most exciting voices in jazz today, alto saxophonist, bandleader, composer, Darius Jones, in the 5 o'clock hour.

Also this afternoon, on the 4 o'clock hour, writer, actor, comedian, Paul Mooney returns to New Day Jazz. Mr. Mooney will be appearing at the Punch Line, in Sacramento, Dec. 1st - 4th.

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	Artist	Song	Album	Label
	Freddie Hubbard	The Intrepid Fox	Red Clay	CTI
	Dave Holland	Interception	Conference of the Birds	ECM
	Miles Davis	Directions	Paraphernalia	JMY
	Jack Hirschman	Occuparty Arcane	Private Recording	Private Recording
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Darius Jones	Chasing The Ghost	Man'ish Boy	AUM-Fidelity
	Darius Jones	Big Train Rollin'	Man'ish Boy	AUM-Fidelity
	Hamiett Bluiett featuring Quincy Troupe	Snake Back Solos	Nali Kola	Soul Note
	Abbey Lincoln	You Made Me Funny	You Gotta Pay The Band	Verve
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Henry Grimes & Rashied Ali	Moments (Poem)	Spirits Aloft	Porter
	Henry Grimes & Rashied Ali	Rapid Transit (excerpt)	Spirits Aloft	Porter
	Interview With Paul Mooney By Justin Desmangles	Interview With Paul Mooney By Justin Desmangles	Interview With Paul Mooney By Justin Desmangles	Interview With Paul Mooney By Justin Desmangles
	Henry Grimes & Rashied Ali	Rapid Transit (excerpt)	Spirits Aloft	Porter
	Louie Belogenis	Alabama	Tiresias	Porter
	Louie Belogenis	Seven Lives	Tiresias	Porter
	Darius Jones	A Train	Big Gurl (Smell My Dream)	AUM-Fidelity
	Darius Jones	Ol' Metal Faced Bastard	Big Gurl (Smell My Dream)	AUM-Fidelity
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Darius Jones & Matthew Shipp	Overvoid	Cosmic Lieder	AUM-Fidelity
	Darius Jones & Matthew Shipp	Weeja Dell	Cosmic Lieder	AUM-Fidelity
	Darius Jones Interviewed By Justin Desmangles	Darius Jones Interviewed By Justin Desmangles	Darius Jones Interviewed By Justin Desmangles	Darius Jones Interviewed By Justin Desmangles
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Dinah Washington	Cold, Cold Heart	Alabama	Oxford American

William Parker and Freedom Today

Show description for Sunday 11/6/2011 @ 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

This afternoon, poet, philosopher, bassist, composer, William Parker returns to the program in the 5 o'clock hour. A preeminent figure in the development of the new music, Mr. Parker is a towering presence in international art & culture. His most recent release, on his own Centering Records, Crumbling In the Shadows Is Fraulein Miller's Stale Cake, is an extraordinary collection of solo bass performances. We will be listening in on many of his most recent projects, including those with David S. Ware, Planetary Unknown, and Craig Taborn, Out of This World's Distortions.

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	Artist	Song	Album	Label
	William Parker	Pointed Acceptance	Crumbling In the Shadows Is Fraulein Miller's Stale Cake	Centering Records
	William Parker & Hamid Drake	Anaya Dancing	Summer Snow	AUM-Fidelity
	William Parker & Hamid Drake	Konte	Summer Snow	AUM-Fidelity
	Farmers By Nature	Out Of This World's Distortions Grow Aspens and Other Beautiful Things	Out of This World's Distortions	AUM-Fidelity
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	David S. Ware / Cooper-Moore / William Parker / Muhammad Ali	Duality is One	Planetary Unknown	AUM-Fidelity
	David S. Ware / Cooper-Moore / William Parker / Muhammad Ali	Divination	Planetary Unknown	AUM-Fidelity
	William Parker	Velocity	Crumbling In the Shadows Is Fraulein Miller's Stale Cake	Centering Records
	William Parker	If There's A Hell Below	I Plan To Stay A Believer: The Inside Songs Of Curtis Mayfield	AUM-Fidelity
	William Parker Organ Quartet	The Struggle	Uncle Joe's Spirit House	Centering Records
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	William Parker & Hamid Drake	Sky	Summer Snow	AUM-Fidelity
	William Parker & Hamid Drake	Earth	Summer Snow	AUM-Fidelity
	Interview With William Parker By Justin Desmangles	Interview With William Parker By Justin Desmangles	Interview With William Parker By Justin Desmangles	Interview With William Parker By Justin Desmangles
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	William Parker	Green Mountains for Bill Dixon	Crumbling In the Shadows Is Fraulein Miller's Stale Cake	Centering Records

Will Alexander & Deep Time

Show description for Sunday 10/30/2011 @ 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Our guest this afternoon, in the 5 o'clock hour, poet Will Alexander. His most recent book, Compression & Purity, is new from City Lights. Also featured this week, new music from alto saxophonist and composer Darius Jones. His new disc, featuring Adam Lane on bass, and Jason Nazary on drums, is Big Gurl (Smell My Dream). We will also be listening in on the extraordinary 3 disc collection from William Parker Crumbling In the Shadows Is Fraulein Miller's Stale Cake.

Few poets writing today can compare with L.A.-based surrealist Will Alexander in terms of the intensity of his imagination or his radically experimental approach to language as material object. Through the use of automatic writing, Alexander practices a surrealism of the word, creating densely textured layers of signification from its sounded and written forms. Compression & Purity, volume five of our Spotlight poetry series, is Alexander's seventh full-length collection. Known for his visionary epics influenced by poets like Césaire, Artaud and Lamantia, Alexander here returns to shorter forms to address his ecological, cosmological and historical concerns. Highlights include monologues from the perspective of "The Blood Penguin" and "The Pope at Avignon," a song by the "Water on New Mars," and an homage to Cesar Vallejo, "Combustion & Leakage." In true surrealist fashion, the book also includes both an autobiographical lyric essay, "My Interior Vita," describing the evolution of Alexander's artistic consciousness through jazz and surrealism, and his disavowal of the autobiographical process, "On Anti-Biography." An imaginative tour de force, Compression & Purity confirms Alexander's reputation among surrealism's foremost contemporary practitioners.

"This new & rich gathering of Will Alexander's works – always in progress – marks him again as the true successor among us to the likes of Surreal & deeply explorative figures like Breton & Césaire. No other poet writing in America today does it the way that Alexander does – a range of words & images that startle & create new pathways for language & the mind-in-freedom (“alchemical, mesmeric, totalic,” as he names them in these pages). Compression & Purity, so aptly titled, is the work of a true American & world master – & a joy to have & read." —Jerome Rothenberg

“Even at its most confounding, most silent level, this work will unavoidably enter and leave you by a genetic thread of conscious mind woven beyond your 'domestic horizon,; your ‘provincial description' to a vibrating ‘celebration of un-brokeneness.’ This song, in the genealogical terms of cognitive evolution, sings us backwards ‘or forwards’ into a state where we are undifferentiated from the cosmos and can speak, as Will Alexander does, in the full range at once of carbon from dust to diamond.” —Ed Roberson

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	Artist	Song	Album	Label
	Darius Jones Trio	E-Gaz	Big Gurl (Smell My Dream)	AUM - Fidelity
	Darius Jones Trio	Michelle Loves Willie	Big Gurl (Smell My Dream)	AUM - Fidelity
	Darius Jones Trio	A Train	Big Gurl (Smell My Dream)	AUM - Fidelity
	William Parker	Green Mountains (for Bill Dixon)	Crumbling In the Shadows Is Fraulein Miller's Stale Cake.	Centering Records
	William Parker	Philadelphia Clay	Crumbling In the Shadows Is Fraulein Miller's Stale Cake.	Centering Records
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Henry Threadgill Zooid	Lying Eyes	This Brings Us To, Vol. 2	Pi Recordings
	Henry Grimes & Rashied Ali	Larger Astronomical Time	Spirits Aloft	Porter Records
	Odean Pope featuring Marshall Allen	The Track	Universal Sounds	Porter Records
	Roscoe Mitchell & Muhal Richard Abrams	Romu	Spectrum	Mutable
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Alice Coltrane	Leo	Translinear Light	Impulse
	John Coltrane	India	The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings	Impulse
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Wasimxzama Khan Naseri	Kavali	Music In The World Of Islam: Human Voice / Lutes	Topic
	Dunya Yunis	Abu Zeluf	Music In The World Of Islam: Human Voice / Lutes	Topic
	Gadabursi Somali of Ogaden	Leader/Chorus Song (excerpt)	Music In The World Of Islam: Human Voice / Lutes	Topic
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Interview With Will Alexander By Justin Desmangles	Interview With Will Alexander By Justin Desmangles	Interview With Will Alexander By Justin Desmangles	Interview With Will Alexander By Justin Desmangles
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	John Coltrane	Chasing The Trane	The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings

Making Moves with Dizzy Gillespie & His Orchestra

A Happy Birthday to Dizzy Gillespie!

Show description for Sunday 10/23/2011 @ 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

This afternoon we will focus on the contributions of the Dizzy Gillespie Afro-Cuban Orchestra. As part of these efforts, we will also explore the music recorded by Charlie Parker as featured soloist with Machito & His Orchestra, including Mango Mangue, as well as Okidoke. In bringing attention to this period, the great composer, arranger Tadd Dameron will also be featured, including his earliest efforts with Harlan Leonard, the small groups featuring Fats Navarro, and the neglected masterwork, The Magic Touch, recorded for Riverside. Along the way we will hear poetry from Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Brooks, Claude McKay, Margaret Walker, Sterling Brown, and Langston Hughes. (Pictured at right, Harriet Tubman)

Runagate Runagate

by Robert Hayden

I.

Runs falls rises stumbles on from darkness into darkness

and the darkness thicketed with shapes of terror

and the hunters pursuing and the hounds pursuing

and the night cold and the night long and the river

to cross and the jack-muh-lanterns beckoning beckoning

and blackness ahead and when shall I reach that somewhere

morning and keep on going and never turn back and keep on going

Runagate

Runagate

Runagate

Many thousands rise and go

many thousands crossing over

O mythic North

O star-shaped yonder Bible city

Some go weeping and some rejoicing

some in coffins and some in carriages

some in silks and some in shackles

Rise and go or fare you well

No more auction block for me

no more driver’s lash for me

If you see my Pompey, 30 yrs of age,

new breeches, plain stockings, negro shoes;

if you see my Anna, likely young mulatto

branded E on the right cheek, R on the left,

catch them if you can and notify subscriber.

Catch them if you can, but it won’t be easy.

They’ll dart underground when you try to catch them,

plunge into quicksand, whirlpools, mazes,

turn into scorpions when you try to catch them.

And before I’ll be a slave

I’ll be buried in my grave

North star and bonanza gold

I’m bound for the freedom, freedom-bound

and oh Susyanna don’t you cry for me

Runagate

Runagate

II.

Rises from their anguish and their power,

Harriet Tubman,

woman of earth, whipscarred,

a summoning, a shining

Mean to be free

And this was the way of it, brethren brethren,

way we journeyed from Can’t to Can.

Moon so bright and no place to hide,

the cry up and the patterollers riding,

hound dogs belling in bladed air.

And fear starts a-murbling, Never make it,

we’ll never make it. Hush that now,

and she’s turned upon us, levelled pistol

glinting in the moonlight:

Dead folks can’t jaybird-talk, she says;

you keep on going now or die, she says.

Wanted Harriet Tubman alias The General

alias Moses Stealer of Slaves

In league with Garrison Alcott Emerson

Garrett Douglas Thoreau John Brown

Armed and known to be Dangerous

Wanted Reward Dead or Alive

Tell me, Ezekiel, oh tell me do you see

mailed Jehovah coming to deliver me?

Hoot-owl calling in the ghosted air,

five times calling to the hants in the air.

Shadow of a face in the scary leaves,

shadow of a voice in the talking leaves:

Come ride-a my train

Oh that train, ghost-story train

through swamp and savanna movering movering,

over trestles of dew, through caves of the wish,

Midnight Special on a sabre track movering movering,

first stop Mercy and the last Hallelujah.

Come ride-a my train

Mean mean mean to be free.

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View Past Shows

	Artist	Song	Album	Label
	Countee Cullen	Heritage	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Dizzy Gillespie featuring Chano Pozo	Minor Walk	Dizzy Gillespie Vol. 1/2	RCA - France
	Dizzy Gillespie featuring Chano Pozo	Cubana Be Cubana Bop	Dizzy Gillespie Vol. 1/2	RCA - France
	Machito & His Orchestra featuring Charlie Parker	Mango Mangue	Afro-Cuban Jazz	Verve
	Langston Hughes	the Negro Speaks of Rivers	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Langston Hughes	I, Too	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	James Moody	Cu-Ba	James Moody & His Modernists	Blue Note
	Tadd Dameron Septet	Jahbero	Tadd Dameron Septet	Blue Note
	Bud Powell Trio	Un Poco Loco	The Amazing Bud Powell	Blue Note
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Margaret Walker	For My People	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra	Things to Come	Bebop	New World Records
	Kenny Clarke & His 52nd St. Boys	Royal Roost	Jazz In Revolution	New World Records
	Machito & His Orchestra featuring Charlie Parker	Okidoke	Afro-Cuban Jazz	Verve
	Dizzy Gillespie featuring Chano Pozo	Algo Bueno (Woody'n You)	Dizzy Gillespie Vol. 1/2	RCA - France
	Modern Jazz Quartet	Woody'n You	Nica's Dream	New World Records
	Gwendolyn Brooks	The Preacher Ruminates	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Gwendolyn Brooks	The Children of the Poor	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Charles Mingus	Ysabels' Table Dance	Tijuana Moods	RCA
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Woody Herman & His Orchestra	Lemon Drop	Bebop	New World Records
	Elliott Lawrence	Elevation	Jazz In Revolution	New World Records
	Dizzy Gillespie featuring Kenny Hagood	Ool Ya Koo	Dizzy Gillespie Vol. 1/2	RCA - France
	James Moody	Tropicana	James Moody & His Modernists	Blue Note
	Tadd Dameron	On A Misty Night	The Magic Touch	Riverside
	Sarah Vaughn	A Ship Without A Sail	Great Songs From Hit Shows Volume 2	Mercury
	Sarah Vaughn	He's Only Wonderful	Great Songs From Hit Shows Volume 2	Mercury
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Dizzy Gillespie	Groovin' High	In The Beginning	Prestige
	Tadd Dameron featuring Barbara Winfield	If You Could See Me Now	The Magic Touch	Riverside
	Sterling Brown	Long Gone	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Dodo Marmarosa Trio	Mellow Mood	Jazz In Revolution	New World Records
	Charlie Parker	Relaxin' at Camarillo	Bebop	New World Records
	Dexter Gordon - Wardell Gray Quintet	The Chase Part 1 & 2	Jazz In Revolution	New World Records
	Claude McKay	St. Issac's Church	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Claude McKay	The Tropics in New York	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Claude McKay	Intro / If We Must Die	Anthology of Negro Poets	Folkways
	Randy Weston	Con Alma	African Nite	Inner City
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Harlan Leonard & His Rockets	A-La-Bridges	Jazz In Revolution	New World Records
	Dizzy Gillespie featuring Chano Pozo	Good Bait	Dizzy Gillespie Vol. 1/2	RCA - France
	Dizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker	Hot House	In the Beginning	Prestige
	Tadd Dameron	Dial B for Beauty	The Arranger's Touch	Prestige
	Tadd Dameron	You're A Joy	The Magic Touch	Riverside
	Tadd Dameron	Swift as the Wind	The Magic Touch	Riverside
	Dizzy Gillespie featuring Joe Carroll	Jump-Did-Le-Ba	Dizzy Gillespie Vol. 1/2	RCA - France
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Sarah Vaughn	Embraceable You	Sarah Vaughn	Emarcy

Does the Secret Mind Whisper? Nov. 11, 2011

• Friday NOV 11

"Does the Secret Mind Whisper?"
Will Alexander, Maria Damon and Justin Desmangles
a symposium on Bob Kaufman, Black surrealism, and cultural poetics
7:30 pm @ Meridian Gallery, 535 Powell Street,



Co-sponsored with Before Columbus Foundation

“…the ‘secret mind’ represents the convergence of multiple cultural trajectories. It is the political unconscious of the US, which registers all the ‘secret, terrible hurts’ (Kaufman, “Bagel Shop Jazz”) visited upon people who belong to an ‘America not on any map’ (Will Alexander), the disenfranchised who may ruminate silently on these social, spiritual and bodily injuries but who may speak of them openly only at their peril.”

—Maria Damon, Jacket2, “Poetry in 1960, A Symposium”

"Does the Secret Mind Whisper?" was the gnomic open question posed by poet Bob Kaufman in an early City Lights broadside by that title. In collaboration with the Before Columbus Foundation, the Poetry Center hosts an evening symposium under that rubric, in order to take up the nature of Kaufman's legacy and practice, and its extensions into the 21st Century. Featured guests include poet-scholars Will Alexander and Maria Damon, in conversation with Bay Area writer, radio host/dj and cultural worker Justin Desmangles.

BOB KAUFMAN (1925–1986) was a key participant in the 1950s San Francisco poetry renaissance and the Beat movement. Author of three renowned poetry broadsides, Abomunist Manfesto, Second April, and Does the Secret Mind Whisper?, published in the late 1950s by City Lights Books, his poetry in print remained elusive until two collections came out in the mid-1960s. The landmark Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness (1965), published by New Directions, has remained in print for better than four decades. Golden Sardine (1967) became a signature City Lights Pocket Poets volume alongside the works of renowned contemporaries Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. During Kaufman's last decade, editor Raymond Foye assembled the volume of fugitive works, Ancient Rain: Poems 1956–1978 (New Directions, 1981). The posthumous collection, Cranial Guitar: Selected Poems, appeared in 1996 (Coffee House Press). Following Kaufman's death in 1986, a two-hour feature program, Bob Kaufman, Poet, was produced by David Henderson for KPFA-FM and aired nationally through the Pacifica network. Regarded in France as "the American Rimbaud," Bob Kaufman has been celebrated internationally for his particular mode of Surrealism, permeated by a profound affinity for the outcasts of American society, the poor and punished. The late saxophonist and jazz song composer Steve Lacy called Kaufman "the greatest jazz poet, and the beatest of the Beats."

WILL ALEXANDER (see bio above) has previously published the essay "Bob Kaufman: The Footnotes Exploded" in Conjunctions 29: Tributes.

MARIA DAMON (see bio above) his written on Bob Kaufman, extensively in her early book The Dark End of the Street: Margins in American Vanguard Poetry (University of Minnesota) and more recently online at Jacket2.

JUSTIN DESMANGLES hosts the radio program New Day Jazz, currently at KDVS-90.3 FM, and available online, a heady blend of music and cultural commentary, focused on the African-American cultural continuum. Frequent guests offer a largesse of inquiring and informed commentary, via conversations with, e.g., scholars William W. Cook and James Tatum on African American Writers and Classical Tradition; A. James Arnold and Clayton Eshlemen on their collaborative translation of Aimé Césaire's Solar Throat Slashed; Robin D.G. Kelley on his stellar biography Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original; and jazz pianist Matthew Shipp on the legacy of Bud Powell. Chair of the Before Columbus Foundation, which hosts the annual American Book Award, Justin Desmangles has organized numerous public programs, at San Francisco Public Library and Yoshi's jazz club in San Francisco's Fillmore neighborhood, among other venues.

In a series of public programs on the life and legacy of Bob Kaufman under the title "Does the Secret Mind Whisper?" he recently brought together AACM co-founder Roscoe Mitchell with Kaufman's poetry in performances of original compositions. An upcoming November 14 Benefit for the Before Columbus Foundation at Yoshi's San Francisco will reunite Roscoe Mitchell and Amiri Baraka in duo performance, and feature the new Ishmael Reed Band.

African American Writers & Classical Tradition, Winner of the American Book Award 2011

African American Writers & Classical Tradition is the most exciting work of of literary criticism to emerge in decades. Indeed, it lays the groundwork for an entirely new field of study. Rarely can it be said that the reading of literary criticism is a joyful process, yet with this book, William W. Cook and James Tatum (pictured above, right to left), have produced just that. Written with great humor, at times tremendous passion, the reader is swept into the excitement of surprise and new discovery, following the adventure unearthed in the vast resources of classical Latin and ancient Greek literature employed by African American poets, novelists, and political thinkers. Once familiar, canonized figures, such as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, and Ralph Ellison, are illuminated in fresh, often startling ways. Neglected masters, Melvin B. Tolson, and George S. Schulyer, are revived, given new life, and shown to have vital relevance to today’s times, cutting to the very core of the most contentious and controversial issues in America. Relatively obscure artists, such as Fran Ross, author of Oreo, are given their proper place alongside the aforementioned giants, and the greatness of poet Rita Dove is affirmed in the brilliant concluding chapter. There is a tremendous sense of momentum in the pages of this book, a momentum propelled by the lifelong friendship of its authors, Cook & Tatum. Their shared wisdom, wit, and delight in the task of bringing this complex and subtle story to us, one so uniquely American, is felt throughout the work. African American Writers & Classical Tradition, presents a new, and much needed, image of American literature, indeed, of American history. One that is vivid, compelling, and crackling with the electricity of folklore and mythology rooted to ancient sources, in both Africa and Europe, giving light to the present moment, our times.

We Kiss In A Shadow

Happy Birthday to Sonny Rollins, pictured above, born Sept. 7th

Show description for Sunday 9/11/2011 @ 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

"Always bear in mind that people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone's head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children." - Amilcar Cabral, (September 12, 1924 – January 20, 1973)

". . . the hottest places in hell are reserved for those, who in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence is betrayal." Martin Luther King, Jr., April 4, 1967, "Why I Oppose the War In Vietnam"

Photograph, at right, by Seydou Keïta

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	Artist	Song	Album	Label
	Bill Evans Trio	Witchcraft	Portrait In Jazz	Riverside
	George Russell	Nardis	Ezz-thetics	Riverside
	Eric Dolphy	17 West	Out There	New Jazz
	Sarah Vaughn	I'm Glad There Is You	Sarah Vaughn	Emarcy
	Sarah Vaughn	Summertime	Afterhours	Columbia
	Billie Holiday	Summertime	The Quintessential	Columbia
	Billie Holiday	A Sailboat in the Moonlight	The Quintessential	Columbia
========================== Airbreak ==========================
	Sonny Rollins	There Is No Greater Love	Way Out West	Contemporary
	Sonny Rollins	A Night In Tunisia	More From The Vanguard	Blue Note
	Thelonious Monk Trio	Bye-Ya	Thelonious Monk Trio	Prestige
	Thelonious Monk	Work	Thelonious Monk & Sonny Rollins	Prestige
	Hank Mobley	52nd Street Theme	Mobley's Message	Prestige
========================== Airbreak ==========================
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	Ted Joans (read by Justin Desmangles)	Passed On Blues: Homage to a Poet	Teducation	Coffee House
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========================== Airbreak ==========================
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	Ornette Coleman	We Now Interrupt For A Commerical

Solar Throat Slashed: Part Two with Clayton Eshleman

Show description for Sunday 8/28/2011 @ 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Our guest today on the 5 o'clock hour, Clayton Eshleman (pictured at right), discussing his most recent work, in collaboration with A. James Arnold, Solar Throat Slashed, the unexpurgated 1948 edition of the masterwork by Aimé Césaire.

Soleil cou coupé (Solar Throat Slashed) is Aimé Césaire’s most explosive collection of poetry. Animistically dense, charged with eroticism and blasphemy, and imbued with an African and Vodun spirituality, this book takes the French surrealist adventure to new heights and depths. A Césaire poem is an intersection at which metaphoric traceries create historically aware nexuses of thought and experience, jagged solidarity, apocalyptic surgery, and solar dynamite. The original 1948 French edition of Soleil cou coupé has a dense magico-religious frame of reference. In the late 1950s, Césaire was increasingly politically focused and seeking a wider audience, when he, in effect, gelded the 1948 text—eliminating 31 of the 72 poems, and editing another 29. Until now, only the revised 1961 edition, called Cadastre, has been translated. The revised text lacks the radical originality of Soleil cou coupé. This Wesleyan edition presents all the original poems en face with the new English translations. Includes an introduction by A. James Arnold and notes by Clayton Eshleman.

“Not only do Eshleman and Arnold give us excellent translations of Césaire’s at times syntactically knotty, etymologically abstruse, and semantically bedeviling verse; they also contextualize the poems—with an introduction by Arnold and endnotes by Eshleman—with crucial historical information and lucid discussions of the complexities of the poems’ language.”—Brent Hayes Edwards, author of The Practice of Diaspora

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Aime Cesaire: Solar Throat Slashed, Part One with A. James Arnold

Show description for Sunday 8/21/2011 @ 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Our guest today on the 5 o'clock hour, A. James Arnold, discussing his most recent work, in collaboration with Clayton Eshelman, Solar Throat Slashed, the unexpurgated 1948 edition of the masterwork by Aimé Césaire. A. JAMES ARNOLD is an emeritus professor of French at the University of Virginia. He is the lead editor of Césaire's complete literary works in French (in progress) and author of Modernism and Negritude: The Poetry and Poetics of Aimé Césaire.

Soleil cou coupé (Solar Throat Slashed) is Aimé Césaire’s most explosive collection of poetry. Animistically dense, charged with eroticism and blasphemy, and imbued with an African and Vodun spirituality, this book takes the French surrealist adventure to new heights and depths. A Césaire poem is an intersection at which metaphoric traceries create historically aware nexuses of thought and experience, jagged solidarity, apocalyptic surgery, and solar dynamite. The original 1948 French edition of Soleil cou coupé has a dense magico-religious frame of reference. In the late 1950s, Césaire was increasingly politically focused and seeking a wider audience, when he, in effect, gelded the 1948 text—eliminating 31 of the 72 poems, and editing another 29. Until now, only the revised 1961 edition, called Cadastre, has been translated. The revised text lacks the radical originality of Soleil cou coupé. This Wesleyan edition presents all the original poems en face with the new English translations. Includes an introduction by A. James Arnold and notes by Clayton Eshleman.

“Not only do Eshleman and Arnold give us excellent translations of Césaire’s at times syntactically knotty, etymologically abstruse, and semantically bedeviling verse; they also contextualize the poems—with an introduction by Arnold and endnotes by Eshleman—with crucial historical information and lucid discussions of the complexities of the poems’ language.”—Brent Hayes Edwards, author of The Practice of Diaspora

“Since Césaire first came into our view, he has seemed to some of us to be, with Breton and Artaud, one of the three truly unbounded poets of Surrealism—not so much lyrical, as with some other, more readily accessible poets (Eluard and Desnos the finest among them), but as Diderot had it over two centuries ago: the maker of a poetry that was and had to be ‘barbaric, vast and wild.’ It is the genius of the present gathering to rescue from previous editings and literary compromises the full force of Césaire’s remarkable 1948 work, Soleil cou coupé/Solar Throat Slashed. The result—in both the original French and in Eshleman’s and Arnold’s remarkable and no-holds-barred translation—is a reconstituted masterwork of the twentieth century and ample grist for the century to come.”—Jerome Rothenberg, editor of Technicians of the Sacred

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10 Years That Shook The City

Show description for Sunday 8/14/2011 @ 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Our guest this afternoon on the 5 o'clock hour, Chris Carlsson, author, activist and most recently editor of the newly published collection of essays Ten Years That Shook the City

A collection of first-person and historical essays spans the tumultuous decade from 1968, the year of the San Francisco State College strike, to 1978 and the twin traumas of the Jonestown massacre and the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. This volume provides a broad look at the diverse ways those ten years shook the City and shaped the world we live in today. From community gardening to environmental justice, gay rights and other identity-based social movements, anti-gentrification efforts, neighborhood arts programs and more, many of the initiatives whose origins are described here have taken root and spread far beyond San Francisco.

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