The lists below are not in order of best/favorite. They are non-hierarchical listings.
longstoryshort by Sekou Sundiata. Released by Ani di Franco’s Righteous Babe, here’s the U.S. griot at the peak of his powers. Beautiful township opener, “Mandela” will have you dancing, “Isle de Goree” will make you weep, “Reparations” is the political rocker of the year.
Blue Indians is John Trudell’s best ever. His band, Bad Dog, rocks the garage, John speaks the truth of rhythm unbending to melody yet complementing perfectly, and over the mountain of meaning the swoon obligato of traditional singer Quiltman. Brilliant.
In Griot Time: String Music from Mali by Banning Eyre -- looking for the way into griot? This book (Temple) and CD (Stern’s Africa) is an outsider’s insider view of the Mali music scene, told by a U.S. guitarist who digs in for lessons and life and enriches us all in the process.
The Dust Blows Forward: An Anthology (Captain Beefheart's Greatest Hits) is a superb collection that will introduce you to rock’s best poet or get your mind back in gear with the possibilities Van Vliet tosses off like doughballs and skeleton breath.
Sheri-D Wilson’s Sweet Taste of Lightning (swerve sound) is hot! Canada’s Number 1 “Action Poet” clobbers the medium! Smooth production, jaggedy poems, text meets performance and they get married, proving “Spinsters Hanging in Trees” to be sweet justice.
The Rommi Smith Band’s Moveable Type is available only with book, from Route. This energetic small press in northern England has a winner in the biting beauty of Ms. Smith. Funny, edgy, and a sensational voice that she uses to propel savvy smart poems straight at you. The book-CD marriage is balanced, intelligent. Rommi and Route are finds!
Rhapsodies in Black: Music and Words from the Harlem Renaissance (Rhino, 4 CD set) -- Rhino has taken the lead in presenting the history of poetry on CD, and this looks a winner. Interspersed with some great Ellington/Armstrong/Bessie Smith/Holliday you’ll find Quincy Jones reading “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” Ice-T doing “If We Must Die” by Claude McKay, Chuck D representing “Odyssey of Big Boy” by Sterling Brown and Eartha Kitt’s satin “Chant for Killing a Snake” by Nicolas Guillen. This goes well with...
Our Souls Have Grown Deep Like the Rivers: Black Poets Read Their Works (Rhino, 2 CD) -- From Hughes, DuBois, Bontemps through Saul Williams and Carl Hancock Rux, with a generous dose of our much-missed Gwendolyn Brooks.
Next year: CDs first on the listening list for the year 2001...
BOOKS
Laugh at the End of the World: Collected Comic Poems 1969-1999 by Bill Knott is book of the year! The most self-destructive poet in town belts this one so far out of the stadium it boomerangs him flat. Bill Knott deserves a Nobel.
In Berrigan’s Sonnets Penguin reprints Ted’s master work, still the fresh genius award of the latter part of the 20th century (and into the 21st, I might add).
The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You -- Frank Stanford’s place in U.S. letters is assured by this booklength sentence. A brilliant wallop to the American stomach, this book is a kamikaze from the Ozarks, and its mission is you.
John Ashbery’s Girls on the Run is a book-length poem based on the fantasyland of Outsider artist Henry Darger; Your Name Here is recent poems: both show why Ashbery is considered our finest poet.
Step Into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black Literature, edited by Kevin Powell, and Giant Steps: The New Generation of African American Writers, edited by Kevin Young, are what we like: dueling energetic anthologies fighting over the turf that is central to today’s U.S. experience, the Black/African American perspective.
Cool For You by Eileen Myles is autobiography, fiction... somewhere writing and life intersect, and prose dances with poetry, this is Eileen’s glorious humanity. Published by the leading small press, Soft Skull.
Come back next year for the books that should be on top of your reading stack for the year 2001...
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