Amiri Baraka - Black & Beautiful / Soul & Madness LP

$39.98

Release Date: May 29th, 2026

Edition of 1000. Comes with a reproduction of the rare original insert.

Originally released in New York in 1968 on Baraka's own Jihad label, Black & Beautiful / Soul & Madness is a fiery document of the 1960s. It could be mistaken for a lost ESP-Disk' release, sitting well between Sun Ra, the Fugs and Albert Ayler. The group was vocal in all the ways; sometimes singing, doo-wop & soul, sometimes rapping in a Last Poets-style, often doing both at the same time. emotionally compelling and extremely powerful, we are proud to have it back in print on vinyl for the first time.

"Calling all black people
calling all black people, man woman child
Wherever you are, calling you, urgent, come in
Black people, come in, wherever you are, urgent, calling
you, calling all black people
calling all black people, come in, black people, come
on in." – Amiri Baraka

"Black & Beautiful / Soul & Madness was the first word-music record I did completely devoted to this form. One piece on a New York Art Quartet side earlier (on ESP-Disk), but Black & Beautiful was recorded at my home and in the small theater my wife, Amina, and I built there The Spirit House (33 Stirling St.) shortly after I had returned home to Newark, NJ, after the implosion of the Harlem based Blacks Arts Repertory Theater-School. Spirit House, like the Black Arts, was created to present Black theater, poetry, music and political dialogue. B&B was not the only side done on those premises, under the record label we created, Jihad A Black Mass with Sun Ra & His Myth Science Arkestra was another. Sonny's Time Now with Sonny Murray and Donald Ayler the third. B&B featured Yusef Iman, an actor I met at the Black Arts who began to come to the Spirit House after the Arts folded. Yusef was a member of the Spirit House Movers & Players which we shortened to The Spirit House Movers (inspired by the dudes in a bar we went to who worked for a moving company). The singing group B&B, the Jihad Singers, was an R&B singing group that Yusef was a member of, the lead singer Freddie Johnson, who I never saw again after the record date. All the musicians were local. Singer Aireen Eternal was Yusef's wife. In our mind we wanted to create world-music that reflected the Motown vibe so popular in the late-'60s. 'Beautiful Black Women' used Smokey Robinson's 'OOOH Baby, Baby' as a model. 'Black And Beautiful' was created by Yusef & Freddie and seemed a classic R&B du-wop send-up. But we also had a clear vision of what we wanted to say regarding the Afro-American struggle for equal rights and self-determination, at least we thought of ourselves as cultural workers, revolutionary artists 'pushing the program' as some of our cultural nationalist comrades were wont to say. I think you can feel our excitement and commitment." – Amiri Baraka