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ESSAYS & SPEECH
 Amiri Baraka
THE BLACK CULTURAL REVOLUTION AND THE ORIGINS OF HIP-HOP
(A Speech given at Wesleyan University, Ct, January, 1999)
" Larry Neal and Askia Toure' were my models in the mid-'60s. We wanted the oral
tradition in our work, we wanted the sound, the pumping rhythm of black music...
We wanted an art that was as black as our music. A blues poetry...; a jazz poetry;
a funky verse full of exploding anti-racist weapons. A bebop and new music poetry,
that would scream and taunt and rhythm-attack the enemy into submission. An art
that would educate and unify black people in our attack on an anti-black, rabid, ra-
cist America. We wanted a mass art, an art that could "Monkey" out the libraries
and "Boogaloo" down the street in tune with popular revolution. A poetry the people
could sing as they beat Faubus and Wallace and Bull Conner to death!"
--- Amiri Baraka on Black Arts Poetry and Cultural Revolution
As an Elder of what you would define as "Old School," it is imperative that I remind
you of your Tradition, and inform you that the great Hip-Hop Youth Culture emerged
from a historical period of massive attempts--efforts by literally millions--of Blacks
to wage cultural and political Revolution in the United States. The Black Arts move-
ment was the largest cultural movement in African-American, and U.S., history.
It was the embodied Vision of thousands of committed artists, writers, musicians,
poets, dramatists, journalists, critics, scholars, historians, actors, photographers, etc.
What I want to focus on, however, is the "Griot/Djali" wing of the Movement, what
one would call the "Fire Prophets" (from an article I wrote on Brother Malcolm X).
The musically-inspired poetic visionaries, Amiri Baraka, Askia Toure', Larry Neal,
Yusef Rahman, Sonia Sanchez, Mari Evans, Carolyn Rogers, Keorapretse Kgotsile,
Haki Madhubuti, Kalamu Ya Salaam, Jayne Cortez, Eugene B. Redmond and others.
Because it was from these Visionaries that the Prophets who inspired the Hip-Hop
Youth culture emerged. I'm speaking of the Original Last Poets, the Muslim Last
Poets, Marc Primus' Afro-American Folkloric Troupe, and the legendary Gil Scot-
Heron and the Midnight Band. While many of these artists are unfamiliar to you,
I'm sure that you're familiar with the "Old School" Last Poets (deemed the Original
God-fathers of Rap) and the legendary Gil Scot-Heron, because some of the contem-
porary Hip-Hop rappers and M.C.'s "sample" their albums and CD's. As a revolu-
tionary poet/activist living and organizing in Harlem in the period from 1968 to '74,
I was the mentor of the Original Last Poets, which included brothers Gylain Kain,
David Nelson, Felipe Luciano, Abiodun Ayewole, and Umar Bin Hassan. ( continue... )
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