The Song, For Real!
Authors : Özge Özbek Akiman
Pages : 97-113
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Publication Date : 2019-11-01
Article Type : Research
Abstract :This article emphasizes the primacy of the song (both as content and form) in Amiri Baraka’s poetics and limits its discussion to the collection entitled, Funk Lore (1996) and the album Real Song (1994) in dialogue with each other. In the context of the theories that value sound and music in terms of their cultural and historical rootedness, Baraka’s "funk lore” means collective knowledge and behavior that incorporates body and kinetics. Baraka breaks the Western forms of reading and writing with his insistence on musicality, orality and performance, which are more than personal choices—the most distinctive of African American expressions. In his omniverse, the soundless ghosts represent the destructive force, whereas the everresisting creative spirit is represented by sound, voice, music and funk.Keywords : Amiri Baraka, Funk Lore, Real Song, African American Music, Cultural Sounds, Song and Resistance