“Jones has learned—and this has been very rare in jazz criticism—to write about music as an artist.”—Nat Hentoff

Black Music is a book about the brilliant young jazz musicians of the early 1960s: John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, and others. It is composed of essays, reviews, interviews, liner notes, musical analyses, and personal impressions from 1959–1967.

LeRoi Jones (now known as Amiri Baraka) is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He was named Poet Laureate of New Jersey from 2002 to 2004 by the New Jersey Commission on Humanities. His most recent book, Tales of the Out & the Gone (Akashic Books, 2007), was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and winner of a PEN/Beyond Margins Award. He lives in Newark, New Jersey.

“Jones/Baraka usually speaks as a Negro—and always as an American. He is eloquent, he is bold. He demands rights—not conditional favors.”—The New York Times Book Review

In 2007, Akashic Books ushered Amiri Baraka back into the forefront of America’s literary consciousness with the short story collection Tales of the Out & the Gone. This reissue features a highly provocative and profoundly insightful collection of 1960s social and political essays.

LeRoi Jones (now known as Amiri Baraka) is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. He was named Poet Laureate of New Jersey by the New Jersey Commission on Humanities, from 2002–2004. His most recent book, Tales of the Out & the Gone (Akashic Books, 2007), was a New York Times Editors’ Choice. He lives in Newark, New Jersey.