A New Music Screaming in the Sun: Haki R. Madhubuti and the Nationalization/Internationalization of Chicago’s BAM

Abstract

This interview was first conducted with Haki R. Madhubuti in his home on May 16, 2017, and revised in March 2019. As one of the architects of the Black Arts Movement (BAM), Professor Madhubuti has, for several decades, distinguished himself through letters, publishing, teaching, and developing independent Black institutions in Chicago. This extensive interview locates and centralizes Madhubuti’s national and international influence among generations of artists, scholars, and activists. The title of this interview is adapted from In the Mecca (1968), Gwendolyn Brooks’s last publication with Harper & Row publishers. In the final line of her first poem about a young Don L. Lee (Haki R. Madhubuti), Miss Brooks describes him as wanting “a new music screaming in the sun.”