The great poet, playwright and activist Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) passed away today at the age of 79. I had the great honor of interviewing the former poet laureate of New Jersey in November 2008. Below is a recording of the podcast of that interview, and a rough transcript of our conversation. Rest in peace to a brilliant man and an incredible soul.

Download my interview with the late Amiri Baraka from November 2008 below:

Click here to download or listen. (Rough Transcript follows)

Dr. Kent:  Welcome to Sound Authors.  It’s Friday November 21st.  This week is the week of thanksgiving and much more.  It’s the leaves have started to fall off the trees, its beautiful weather; crisp air, you can see the stars at night and feel the chill – even inside.  It’s a wonderful time of year.  We’ve got three guests on the show today.  At the very end of the show a fellow named Michael Cleveland, who won five international bluegrass music association fiddle player of the year awards.  Then I’ve got a new author on the show named Carson Gilmore.  He’s got a book called Boy on Fire.  My special guest is at the beginning of the show today.  His name is Amiri Baraka and he’s a world famous poet, writer, activist and its such an honor to have him on the show.  He’s won many awards and we’ll talk to him right now.  Welcome to the show Amiri Baraka.

Amiri Baraka:  Yeah, how ya doin?

Dr. Kent:  I’m doing great.  How are you?

Amiri Baraka:  I’m okay, I’m alright.  I’m looking out the window at this beautiful fall day just before it turns cold.

Dr. Kent:  Exactly.  Let me ask you just to start out as a book that just is coming out in January 2009 in a couple of months of your essays from the 60s called Home, Social Essays and there’s a piece in here during one of the essays where you talk about hope and you said the old folks kept singing there will be a better day or the suns going to shine in my back door someday, and I’ve had my fun if I don’t get well no more, then what would that fun turn out to be and you said hope is a delicate suffering.  And I wanted to ask you about that because Barack Obama just became the President elect and he ran on hope.  What are your thoughts about that?

Amiri Baraka:  Well I think we all experienced that delicate suffering you know fighting for him.  I made several appearances speaking.  Not officially of course but in forums and groups urging them to support Barack Obama because to me its just part of the civil rights movement.  I see it as the fruition of the struggles of people like Dr. King, Carmichael and Malcolm X.

I feel it’s the fruition of their struggles at a much higher level and because of the inherent democratic content of that struggle, it raises the whole society to another level and we are approaching yet another cross roads.  I mean capitalism obviously but capitalism, Barack’s in a position where he has to take on the battle of FDR, Franklin Roosevelt and I hope that in those first 100 days he can throw 100 left hooks and jabs and right crosses and get some kind of legislation passed that can transform this society as much as it can be transformed under this kind of debt.

Dr. Kent:  You share sort of a namesake.  Your last name is Baraka and Barack of course.

Amiri Baraka:  It’s the same root.

Dr. Kent:  Exactly and he as been widely of course the media is saying oh, he’s a Muslim and saying that’s a negative thing.  I believe your still Muslim yourself and.

Amiri Baraka:  No I was never Muslim.  I was given my name by the guy who ### Malcolm X ### but in fact I changed the name that was given to me Baracka, which is Arabic.  Swahili is about a couple hundred miles south and changed it to Baraka, which is Swahili.  You know because I wanted to emphasize that Barack aspect of it.  But the name was given to me by a man who I thought was an important Muslim imam so I’ve never been far from that learning anyway but I’ve never been in the religion.  I’m not a religious person, I’m a communist.

Dr. Kent:  What do you think about the people that are so anti-Muslim?  Because you obviously it’s a proud name for you and what are your thoughts about this country towards Muslims?

Amiri Baraka:  Like I said, I’m not religious.  You don’t have to be religious like Malcolm X said keep your religion at home, keep your religion in the church or the temple, you know what I mean?  But in terms of the fairs for democracy and equal rights and I think that what’s happening.  You have some people bothering their pyramids and they go and bother them back.  Now you can blame it on Islam if you want, but it’s not about Islam it’s about the fact of oppression and people resisting oppression.

Now a lot of stuff that some of these right wing so called Muslim groups, I don’t go for that either.  You know, I never thought suicide was especially neuveau riche you know?  But at the same time, you can’t blame the religion; that would be like blaming Judaism on Israel.  Or Blaming Christianity on the United States.  You can’t do that.  I mean that’s a nonsecutor.

Dr. Kent:  So let me ask you about one of your more controversial moments recently.  Of course after September 11 as the poet laureate of new jersey you wrote a poem Somebody Blew Up America; an extraordinary piece of writing and had some controversial statements in it, but its poetry.  Then New Jersey passed some legislation to oust you because of that poem.  Is that correct?

Amiri Baraka:  Yeah and that’s because of the piece that I did.  They couldn’t look at me as the poet laureate in New Jersey; they would have to go back in time as far as ipso facto so what they did was they eliminated the post of poet laureate so that New Jersey now is officially ignorant.  There is no poet laureate unlike other states; we are just content to be poet laureateless.  The thing was that the ADL which should file papers about the needs of a foreign power, whether it be the Jews or anyone else, they threw that sand up in the air to blind people because they thought we were saying something negative about Israel.

The point is this, if you can’t even question a foreign country without being termed anti-politic well what have we got to?  I can’t question what’s going on in Dafur or the Congo without being called anti-black.  It’s very silly but it serves as good sense as long as it lasts.  Any time you raise questions about illegal activities if it’s a sovereign and fearless state then somebody wants to say your anti-Jewish, which might be a good defense if you think about it, but people have discovered that a disguise and they’re trying to masquerade the actual evil ###.  So what are we supposed to do with the Palestinians?  It’s crazy.

Dr. Kent:  I have a question for you about the introduction that you’ve written in this new edition of home social essays.  You talked about some of the imagery that you used in the 60s was from the streets and included some anti-homosexual slurs and things like that.  Tell me how you’ve changed over the years, in the last 40 years.

Amiri Baraka:  When we were in the states of miller growing up you’re not talking about them being homosexual, you’re talking about them being lets say courageless, but even that doesn’t wash in terms of talking about gay people because a lot of gay people would knock you out so it doesn’t actually wash in those terms but that’s what I said.  You know, my use of that whole kind of steep language and I did several of these in the late 50s and my use of that steep language seemed to be okay.  So that’s why I wrote that.  In fact, I don’t even know why I considered that for my book cover when I have some that still have to be published; you know my contemporary political contribution.

Dr. Kent:  Let me ask you out of pure curiosity.  You’ve done a lot of work with jazz musicians and in that field and you have a poem in one of your latest books Tales of the Out and Gone about Monk and having sort of cited monk.  Who did you know?  Who did you meet?  I know that Coletrain was one of your favorites and you did some work with his son Ron.  Talk about jazz back in the day.

Amiri Baraka:  Well, I was always into music since I was a kid and I think I got into bebop when I was in junior high school.  When I was going to junior high school my cousin gave me all of his records and introduced me to Charley Parker, Stan Getz and all of those people and that’s when I became passionately interested in music because that music opened me up intellectually.  It made me think of things I had never thought of before, that had occurred to me.  From the language, you know the way he used to talk about these cats and things.

I picked that up as a teenager and it never stopped.  Then I went into college and the Air Force and I listened to the music all the time and then when I came home and I had a chance to go to New York and meet Malcolm and meet Tussad and be in the village and meet with Tussad, some of that was serendipitous move.  I moved into an apartment right over ###.  So definitely it’s a strange mix.  So I happened to live nearly over the spot where monk and Chaney lived.  We lived together and you can hear the results of that on ### at Carnegie Hall.

Dr. Kent:  That’s amazing.

Amiri Baraka:  That’s what I said!  But its more amazing to look back at that chain, my God its an incredible idea but then I got to know them because I used to hang at all the joints, the Village Stage, the Village Vanguard and the ###.  It was two blocks up the street from my house.  All those places, I spent my whole growing up period hovering around inside those places.  That was the whole basis under penning my writing because I would write about music, which is also a way of developing the skill of writing.  I loved them, I loved their music, but remember, in the sixties and the early 70s it was possibly ### Miles Davis, Coletrain on the same night.  All of them have passed away.

That whole era has passed and we are confronted now with the age generation and the ability to kick it up and eventually they will.  Like the Golden Age in the 20s and the 30s.  Charlie Parker was there, Miles Davis and so that will happen again and the music will reconstitute itself and get past the confusion ###.  Even like poetry; poetry will have to get past this negative pall that they put over it.  So it’s a question of how do the arts reflect the state of society?  Society is in its backward period, which hopefully we have left with the leaving of Bush.  I hope he goes to jail but I think the society now has a chance to recover and to make progress again.  In the 60s when there was all that turbulence there was also a lot of progress and a lot of determination with equality and equal rights so that was reflected in the arts.

Dr. Kent:  You talked about Bush leaving office and at the end of the latest book of new writing called Tales of the Out and Gone you talk about Bush as a cowboy and its fascinating the level of anger you’re able to put in that chapter in that short story.  Talk about what he’s done to the country.

Amiri Baraka:  Well I mean the fact that first he’s stolen and squandered the US surplus gotten under Clinton; he’s spending now at this late date ten billion dollars a month on a war who’s only practical aim is to enrich the success of his friends that control the economy here.  He just gave a trillion dollars to the banks.  I mean give me a break.  A trillion dollars to the banks?  To do what, make sure the rich people stay rich?  Not to bail out the 6,000 people a day who are losing their homes.  Bush, at the end of this completely disastrous tour in which we have seen from 9/11 which I do not ### to the Arabs.  I still think it’s not actively part of it, though actively not trying to stop it.

Why?  Because it has enabled them to go into Afghanistan, to go into Iraq, to support ethnic cleansing in Khuzestan to support the invasion of Iraq; to get into Iran.  And now, stupidly, by getting entangled in some scuffle with the Russians to get into it with the North Koreans and have their secret hatred of course, the Chinese we are up to their necks in debt to so they cant do too much mischief; so this is what Bush has done.  The republican matrix that has all but destroyed this country and it only gives reign which has instituted homeland security, a kind of neo-fascist over the citizens of the United States.  He opened a gulag in Guantanamo, which is ironic because this gulag on the Cuban soil to frustrate and challenge them being guilty of torture ### the most bloodthirsty and guilt ridden steps in the regime that we’ve had.

Otherwise, how do you think a black man got to be president of the United States?  The Americans themselves have come to the end of their rope.  They go, it can’t be worse than this!  It can’t be worse than this.  So this is the fourth revolution that’s been had in America.  The first one of course eliminated the British; the second one was the civil war with the whole black desegregation and civil rights movement in the sixties and this fourth one, the election of Barack Obama.  So we’re actually at the threshold of taking the steps.

What he’s going to have to do to correct this evil that Bush has created is he’s going to have to take certain social democratic steps.  Like the question of universal healthcare.  The question of making education available the way it can be in community service.  This parallels actually ### because at the end of Hoover’s destructive reign, the republicans destructive reign and ###.  You know the whole question of unemployment insurance and social security.  Those are socialist programs that Roosevelt adapted and used.  Actually they say capitalism and that’s what Barack Obama is going to have to do, stop capitalism.

To me, many aspects of social democratic policy, that has been the policy in Europe for years and years.  But of course he will meet a lot of loud mouth rich people and loud mouth ignorant people and that’s why I say he’s got to strike quickly in his first 100 days.

Dr. Kent:  Well here’s something that I’ve been thinking about a lot in this election is that its amazing that black people came out and voted and its amazing to see how emotional everyone got.  The day that Obama got elected the pundits on TV were talking and talking and talking, and the second that he was declared the winner it was almost like there was shock to all the people on TV, even though they knew it was going to happen.  There’s like this shock on their faces; they were crying, even the republicans were amazed.  I think even to the last second people said this couldn’t possibly happen.

Amiri Baraka:  Yeah well this is a new era.  I was in Italy that night and it could’ve been the United States.  I mean, people were transfixed.  I had been in Italy ten days and I was telling people over there if you’ve got relatives in the United States call them up and tell them to vote.  I know a lot of them were going to school and I said call them up to vote.  But the whole mood in Europe was very hopeful; they hoped that Obama would win.

I mean especially young people, but all people are fed up with George Bush and fed up with the craziness of us foreign policy and the kind of weight it had put on the world and they were actually relieved.  Some people made a joke about now we’ve got a president that doesn’t even need a tan, but it’s true.  And if you think its insulting about the tan, I don’t, it’s true.  You’ve got to live with that.  So it’s the possibility of a new era.  The point is that those of us on the ground, its up to us to insist on change.  Its time for that fragility to give way to actuality.

Dr. Kent:  I have sort of a unique hope that, my fiancé and I were talking about the rich somehow have been able to put one over on basically the poor whites.  You know, working class white people to vote for the republicans because of guns, God, gays and all that but the blacks always knew who to vote for.  The poor blacks knew but the poor whites are the ones that turned the election and I have hope that maybe they’ve caught on.  They need to vote their own interests.

Amiri Baraka:  I think first of all that’s overstated.  It’s true that racism is like a drug and it’s really about white supremacy.  White supremacy is like a drug, there’s no doubt about it and a lot of the ignorant, and the poor unfortunately have succumbed to that a long time ago and can’t take it.  I wrote a piece called American Junkies a couple of months ago talking about the thing that’s plagues the united states is this addiction called white supremacy, even though it doesn’t serve its interest.  The last thing we should be doing is voting for McCain and empowering the right wing that’s going to just bleed them dry.  You understand?

But that’s the legacy of this addiction of white supremacy and they’ve been addicted since the 17th Century and its been reinforced in every way possible.  By the educational system, the media, by politicians; there was a crazy politician, where was he from? Down there in the south, Alabama I think who talked about Obama is a communist, a Muslim and there’s another guy in Michigan who put on his clown suit the day after the election and stood out in the street to protest the fact.  Then another one in the Young Americans for freedom who was saying that Obama is a communist Muslim and that the right people oppress and I say this.

That’s a white supremacy virtue, not only are they oppressed but they can be oppressed in a day.  And I’m thinking wow, it takes longer than a day, a week, but that’s the kind of madness.  You’re listening to the junkies; you’re listening to people who are addicted.  The possibility they can’t shoot up on white supremacy again leaves them in a state of complete disorganization.  They don’t know their butts from a hole in the ground.

Dr. Kent:  Well there were a couple of things on the campaign trail; I mean I started to get really nervous.  I’m happy because Obama has won, things have cooled down quite a bit but when McCain started pulling out all the stops and people started screaming and going crazy it felt like everything was just being unleashed publicly.

Amiri Baraka:  Yeah well it’s like Hitler.  If you go back and look at the last republic in Germany where Hitler rose, that’s what they were doing.  They had their storm troops on the street they were smashing and breaking windows out of Jewish stores and whatnot, and then the thing that gave them real power like 911 was the burning of the reischeguard.  And the minute the reisheguard was burned they then passed something called the Reichstag enablement act and the first thing they did was lock up trade unionists, communists, Jews and other minorities like gypsies and a couple of black people over there and then they ran them out.

And McCain struck me as the kind of weak kneed politician who might be like the chancellor of Germany who just gave power to the Nazis.  Actually Bush it was less legal the way he got into power, he stole the election.  He got into power less legal than Hitler who was appointed by the head of state.  So we’re on very shaky ground.  We’re on extremely shaky ground; a bankrupt country fighting a war that it cannot win and McCain’s policies; those last speeches about he wants to distribute the wealth, I want to create wealth.

Its kind of like head up your ass popularism, you know what I mean?  Don’t you understand what he just said?  Don’t you understand what he just said?  But it’s demographically flying beneath the radar when he says crazy things and people say wait, they’re going to kill me tomorrow.

Dr. Kent:  Well it’s been a real honor speaking with Amiri Baraka.  He’s got a website online; amiribaraka.com and there’s some great stuff on there including an mp3 of some great work as well as some poetry on there and everything of people should show up and check that out.  Somebody Blew Up America; I listened to that whole mp3.  It’s an amazing reading, with some jazz musicians’ passionate reading of that.  What’s your next project?

Amiri Baraka:  I’ve got two books coming out in a month or so.  One is called Digging, the Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music.  That’s about jazz of course, the focus of my writings over the last 20 years, and there’s another book called Razor, Revolutionary Art for Culture Revolution.  This is about and there are a lot of essays about it, the last 20 years of revolutionary art.  It’s about writing, painting and the whole need for revolutionary art in the United States. It’s about winning the minds of the American people away from atheists, away from people at NBC, Mickey Mouse, and Fox.  So those two books are coming out and then in February I’ll be in Paris for the tenure of jazz opera that I wrote with David Murray the saxophone player called ###.  We’re going to do an ###.  So those are the two things that I’m working on.

Dr. Kent:  Sounds like an exciting new year coming up.

Amiri Baraka:  Hopefully, I just hope that excitement is compounded by some real political advance from our president elect.

Dr. Kent:  Amen to that.  Well it’s been an honor speaking with Amiri Baraka and we wish him all the best, I hope to speak with him again.

Amiri Baraka:  Thank you very much.