A Black Mass

Context

A Black Mass
Written by Amiri Baraka
Date premiered 1966
Original language English

A Black Mass is a play written by Amiri Baraka and performed at Proctor's Theatre in Newark, New Jersey in 1966. Baraka also recorded a version of the play with Sun Ra's Myth-Science Orchestra in 1968.[1] The play is based on the religious doctrine of Yakub as taught by the Nation of Islam. The story of Yakub describes the origin of "colored" people according to this doctrine.[2]

In the play, Baraka inverts the idea that white symbolizes goodness and black symbolizes wickedness, so that the images of beauty and life are associated with blackness.[3]

In the latter years of the 1960s and into the 1970s Baraka was a member of several organizations, that advocated for African American Political prominence. And this play, which makes the black body the natural form, and the white body an inhumane monster, could be a way to help in this cause.

This play is a visceral experience through the use of music, which in text is described as "Music of eternal concentration," and auditory scenes of pandemonium, in which the room is filled with the sounds of the women of the show screaming. Visually, the person consuming the piece of theatre are in a constant sense of unease as the actors are not solely confined to the stage. The "beast" leaps into the area where the audience is sitting, while screaming "White White White" repeatedly. The play considers whiteness to be beastly. to end the show the narrator speaks this text to the audience. "And so Brothers and Sisters, these beasts are still loose in the world. Still they spit their hideous cries. There are beasts in our world, Brothers and Sisters. There are beasts in our world. Let us find them and slay them. Let us lock them in their caves. Let us declare the holy war. The Jihad. Or we cannot deserve to live. Izm-el-Azam. Izm-el-Azam. Izm-el-Azam." The final statement, which means "May God have mercy," is repeated continuously until the lights go dark.[4]

This play is largely controversial due to its content which directly places you in front of a dramatized role reversal of the racial views held not too long before the time, that people of Caucasian decent were superior to people of African decent. In this fictions world, the preverbal default of skin tone is black, and the white skin is unnatural, and subsequently must be fought against. It was not possible to leave this show without feeling something deep, regardless of the emotion that may be, which is why it is a polarizing pice, acclaimed by some, and hated by others.

Baraka, however, was not concerned with controversy. A lot of his work was controversial, and he still created it in order to raise the African American community politically and socially.

References

  1. ↑ Discogs
  2. ↑ Watts, Jerry Gafio (2001). Amiri Baraka: the politics and art of a Black intellectual. NYU Press. p. 503 n.32. ISBN 978-0-8147-9373-2. Retrieved 11 July 2011. The Baraka play A Black Mass is based on the Nation of Islam's Yacub myth.
  3. ↑ Elam, Harry Justin (2001). Taking It to the Streets: The Social Protest Theater of Luis Valdez and Amiri Baraka. University of Michigan Press. p. 53. ISBN 978-0-472-08768-6. Retrieved 11 July 2011.
  4. ↑ Watts, Jerry (August 2001). Amiri Baraka: The Politics and Art of a Black Intellectual. NYU Press. ISBN 9780814793732.


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