LeRoi Jones, Larry Neal, and "The Cricket": Jazz and Poets' Black Fire

Abstract

Two quotes drawn from pages of The Cricket, mimeographed magazine edited by LeRoi Jones, Larry Neal, and A. B. Spellman in 1968 and 1969, most aptly reflect intent of magazine's vision of inter-arts solidarity, aspiration, and attitude. James Stewart's essay Revolutionary in Total Context of Distension proclaims, Black art is movement, being and becoming. art is fluid. creation is flux. Speech, poetry, dance and music (Cricket 3: 14). And considering a new album by Albert Ayler in final issue of publication, Larry Neal writes: can be one of strongest cohesives towards consolidating a Nation. The will not survive locked into bullshit categories. James Brown needs to know Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, and Pharoah Sanders.... Implied here is principle of artistic and national unity; a unity among musicians, our heaviest philosophers, would symbolize and effect a unity in larger cultural and political terms. Further, there should be more attempts to link to other areas of Arts movement. LIKE: REVOLUTIONARY CHOREOGRAPHERS LIKE ELMO POMARE, JOHN PARKS, JUDI DEARING, TALLY BEATY SHOULD BE CHECKING OUT CECIL TAYLOR'S MUSIC WHICH IS HEAVILY POSITED ON DANCE CONCEPTS. HOW DOES POETRY AND MUSIC OPERATE IN THE CONTEXT OF POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS GATHERINGS. PHAROAH NEEDS A TEMPLE. SUN RA IS A BEAUTIFUL BLACK INSTITUTION. POETS SHOULD WRITE SONGS. (Cricket 4: 38-39) While these two transmissions most fittingly reflect mission of The Cricket, nearly everything that appeared in magazine functioned to promote as a cultural nucleus. Though only four issues were produced, The Cricket--subtitled in Evolution--vitally represented and upheld accelerated standards for progressive art by insisting on a flow between various creative forms after bebop became mainstream. Alternative forms of protest emerging subsequent to bebop significantly influenced writers contemporaneously engaged in process of provoking cultural evolution and revolution. With extended improvisations of jazz, unfettered conceptual organization and whole experience of new veins of became a tribal chorus that initiated a breakthrough point for artists working in other forms of expression. In 1960s, progressive interpretations of this helped to tear away restraint away from a group of writers who assertively formed their own events, publications (printed, audio, and filmic), and institutions to provide an outlet for honest, insightful dialog and expression amongst their African American peers and communities. Bandleader/composer/pianist Sun Ra's poem Music Neglected Plane of Wisdom resounds intensity that was felt to embody: is existence, key to universal Language Because it is universal language ... ..... Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Music. is not material. is spiritual. is a living soul force. (Cricket 3: 20) LeRoi Jones and Larry Neal were forward-looking writers who by 1968 had already co-edited Fire: An Anthology of African American Writing. The pair identified directly with musicians, shared beliefs and concerns with them. Jones and Neal sought to share resources, space, and page with peers they viewed as the priests of pure wisdom, in essence voice of a people (Cricket 1: a). Closely aligned with radical jazz and musicians, they knew political and cultural significance of as a rejection of an oppressive European colonialist mind set. Jones's books Blues People (1961) and (1967), and various essays by Neal in The Cricket and elsewhere, demonstrate a thorough knowledge of subject. Stylistically, their words in all forms embody mighty verbal jazz, an excursion in tune with immediate world. …