Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music, Amiri Baraka
University of California Press, 2009
Reviewed by Kyle Pivarnik
You might want to load up Pandora before you dive into Amiri Baraka’s new book, Digging:
The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music, a collection of essays centered around the
world of jazz and blues, extending into its industry, cultural perceptions, and politics. I suggest
this for two reasons: either you’ve never heard these musicians through the intimate perspective
of Baraka before, or if you have, it’s high time you heard them again. Either way, you might be
surprised by the synchronicities of a Miles Davis or John Coltrane playlist and Baraka’s inside
guide to the world of jazz, blues, and beyond.
Many of us might primarily associate Baraka with the world of poetry but to do so would
be both an oversight to him and ourselves. Baraka was the founder of the Black Arts Movement
(BAM) in 1965, the artistic arm of the Black Panthers Movement. During this time, Baraka
sought ways to utilize black poetry and art as mechanisms for social change. Rather than seeking
assimilation, the BAM’s aesthetic was to strike a blow at the institutions that refused black
culture or only admitted it on their terms. In his poem “Black Art,” Baraka incites, "we want
poems that kill." In the wake of Malcolm X’s death, Baraka’s militant stance was vital to the
pulse of black contemporary culture. More recently, Baraka was named Poet Laureate of New
Jersey, a title the state tried to take away from him after his controversial poem “Somebody Blew
Up America” was cited as being anti-Israeli. However, despite Governor Jim McGreevey’s
attempts, Baraka remains in the position.
But through all this, Baraka has always maintained his ties with the musical world—from
the time he was a “young bopper probably quite nasty in [his] altogether ignorant pseudowisdomic dancing” to his works Blues People: Negro Music in White America (1963), Black
Music (1968), and The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues (1987). Baraka also heads up the
word-music ensemble, Blue Ark: The Word Ship, and co-directs Kimako’s Blues People in his
basement theater. One thing is clear: Baraka both feeds into and is sustained by the world of
music.
Digging, in some ways, is the continuation of the story begun in his 1963 book, Blues
People, a previous collection of essays that traces slavery’s influence on black music and black
music’s influence on white culture. Baraka writes, “Blues People is a beginning text. There is yet
much work to be done … Not only to further illuminate the obscured history but to bring all the
voices, the contributors, the pioneers, the innovators, the unknown and little known facts and
people, up front where they belong.” And Digging does just that. Covering the twenty-year span
of 1986-2006, Baraka fleshes out the ongoing saga of Afro-American music and its relationship
to the people of the United States.
Key to this are the ideas of the Djali (the West African Gleeman, Town Laugher, “he
who gets down in order to take us up!”); the history of the drum as a danger to imperialism,
“replicating the first human instrument [it] keeps life, the sun, replicating itself inside us. Its beat.
Night and day. In and out, the breath. Coming and Going, the everything”; and the dynamic
between Afro-American music and its appropriation by the dominate white culture: from Blues
to Rock N’ Roll, Aretha Franklin to Barbra Streisand, and even Brer Rabbit to Bugs Bunny.
Though this dichotomy between black culture and white appropriation has a continual presence
throughout the book, as well it should, it is first and foremost the music that propels the book
forward. Baraka writes: “One thing about Black People, we always got our music. It comes with
us. To make a way in the front and the back, like colors on a map, our music is our path, it shows
where we been, where we goin, and where we at.”
Digging isn’t the dry, reductive version of Afro-American music one might find in a
Blues and Jazz 101 classroom. This is Baraka, as always, shooting from the hip and telling it
how it is. Divided into three sections (Essays; Great Musicians; and Notes, Reviews, and
Observations), the book often feels like a personal tour of Baraka’s bookshelf. In fact, it’s not
hard to imagine one of these essays coming out as a conversation in his living room with a record
on the turntable. His continual presence of sharp observations, rare insights, and the familiar
interjections of “digs,” “dudes,” and other slang keep the text authentic, and it’s clear that Baraka
has a personal investment in the subject matter. Balancing thorough history, personal anecdote,
and a casual tone is not an easy task. Many writers would fail to achieve such integration,
coming off as forced or patronizing. Baraka writes not from the position of seasoned researcher
but a veteran of the life. When Baraka writes about the “feeling” and “spirit” that propels Afromusic forward, when he addresses the Black aesthetic, and when he deplores the domination of
these scenes by whites, there’s a perspective and tonality that only comes from first-hand
experience.
But for all that, Baraka’s book is not an easy one to read. In many ways, it demands a
certain amount of awareness or knowledge about these subjects; Digging is not a book that meets
you where you are, but that you must rise to meet. For those too young to have been engaged
with this music, let alone heard it when the artist was still alive, it’s a fast-paced education that
requires a certain grit and endurance. Yet, there’s a timeless quality to these essays, and the links
between white cultures’ long consumption of jazz is easily adapted to the more recent
commodification of hip hop and rap, and it’s easy enough to see how little things have changed.
Baraka’s essay, in some ways, promotes a “those in the know” attitude, an “us vs. them”
mentality that left me wondering just who was allowed in the conversation. As a young, white
male, I found myself questioning my role as reader. At first, I felt that these essays weren’t for
me, and in many ways they’re not. This collection speaks to an older generation that fought for
social equality decades before I was even conceived. There is, in fact, an in-the-know audience
that this book is aimed toward. An audience that hears Davis and Coltrane ringing in their ears
and feels the wounds of loss from previous decades. But that’s not to say that people like me
can’t be included in the discussion. In fact, I think Baraka would state it’s important that we are.
The consumption of black culture is a core concept of the collection, and this consumption is true
now more than ever. Baraka rallies against the critiquing of black art by white critics and white
artists getting rich off of black styles. That the origins of American music have been glossed over
by corporate elitism. Yet, even though the line between appreciation and appropriation has been
significantly blurred, in the end, Digging serves to remind all of us where our culture comes
from.
It’s tempting to compare Digging to the liner notes of the last twenty years, but it’s more
than that. This collection functions like the music it focuses on, in that both are byproducts of a
society continually moving forward and inextricably linked to its past. Digging offers a
necessary link to contemporary culture’s roots, reminding us that this music, the music of the
United States, comes from a specific and important lineage. While Baraka wants us to never
forget this aspect, I think the book also, to some degree, bookends the time periods discussed in
it. But with Baraka’s sharp observations ringing in our ears, just maybe we’ll be able to look at
our present and figure out what’s really going on. After all, with music as “our path, [that] shows
where we been, where we goin, and where we at,” at least we’ll never be alone.