The Sound Approach: The Changing Same of Amiri Baraka’s Black Internationalism

Abstract

This article explores Amiri Baraka’s significant contributions to the field of black internationalism. Through an analysis of his own poetry and performance, this essay demonstrates how his cultural practices and political activism were instrumental not only in developing black international consciousness but also in mobilizing local political power. His cultural work exhibited a domestic Pan-Africanism that centered black transnational concerns within the arenas of national U.S. politics and the local domestic politics of his hometown of Newark, New Jersey. By focusing on the changing same of his esthetic method, this article examines the consistent staging of what I call a black transnational esthetic, an institutionalized theory and praxis that pervaded his cultural and political work. Baraka’s esthetic, a comprehensive multimodal approach at once musical, literary, political, performative, and institutional, served as a sonic re-articulation of the radical possibility of organized black international social and political thought and activism.