Description: For almost half a century, Amiri Baraka has ranked among the most important commentators on African American music and culture. In this brilliant assemblage of his writings on music, the first such collection in nearly twenty years, Baraka blends autobiography, history, musical analysis, and political commentary to recall the sounds, people, times, and places he's encountered. As in his earlier classics, Blues People and Black Music, Baraka offers essays on the famous--Max Roach, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane--and on those whose names are known mainly by jazz aficionados--Alan Shorter, Jon Jang, and Malachi Thompson. Baraka's literary style, with its deep roots in poetry, makes palpable his love and respect for his jazz musician friends. His energy and enthusiasm show us again how much Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and the others he lovingly considers mattered. He brings home to us how music itself matters, and how musicians carry and extend that knowledge from generation to generation, providing us, their listeners, with a sense of meaning and belonging.
Review Quotes: "What sets Digging apart from similar treatises are the rhythms and textures of Baraka's prose, which render audible the thrill of listening to and engaging with black musical sounds. Over the course of Digging, we hear Baraka extolling the virtues of Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You" (one of the most universally derided songs in the recent history of popular music), providing an intimate portrait of Nina Simone in the 1980s, disparaging mainstream jazz criticism, writing lyrically about John Coltrane and Miles Davis, and exploring Bill Cosby's jazz hipster roots. These seemingly disparate subjects are held together by Baraka's lyrical imagination as well as his critical incisiveness. . . . Digging, like Blues People and Black Music before it, is a major contribution to both African American literature and American music criticism."-- "African American Review"