Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

BAR Book Forum: Paul Steinbeck’s “Message to Our Folks”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
03 Apr 2019
BAR Book Forum: Paul Steinbeck’s “Message to Our Folks”
BAR Book Forum: Paul Steinbeck’s “Message to Our Folks”

The members of the Art Ensemble represented “five different articulations of Africanity.”

“The musicians organized themselves as a cooperative.”

In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Paul Steinbeck. Steinbeck is Associate Professor of Music at Washington University in St. Louis.His book is Message to Our Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago.

Roberto Sirvent: How can your book help BAR readers understand the current political and social climate?

Paul Steinbeck:My book Message to Our Folks  tells the story of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, a group of five experimental musicians affiliated with the AACM, a Chicago-based collective of African American composers and performers. The Art Ensemble was formed in the late 1960s, a period of great political and social upheaval—in Chicago, across the United States, and around the world. Like their AACM colleagues and other 1960s musicians, the members of the Art Ensemble developed a creative practice that consciously responded to the political and social conditions they encountered in their daily lives. At the time, the biggest challenge facing the Art Ensemble was sociocultural in nature: a society that valued black music (and other forms of black cultural production) while devaluing black musicians and indeed black humanity. This peculiar dynamic is still with us today, as contemporary black artists can attest.

What do you hope activists and community organizers will take away from reading your book?

The paradoxical social position of black culture workers affected the Art Ensemble in many ways, most spectacularly in France. The group left Chicago in 1969 and relocated to Europe, settling initially in Paris. In 1970, after the musicians performed at a Paris concert benefiting the Black Panther Party, local authorities forced them to abandon their home and eventually chased them out of France. This incident, as well as other difficulties with record labels, concert venues, etc., convinced the members of the Art Ensemble to take charge of their destiny by establishing a set of social and business practices that would insulate the band from the political, social, and economic pressures of the culture industry. The musicians organized themselves as a cooperative, managing their expenditures and saving as much as 50% of the income that they earned from recording sessions, concerts, and merchandise sales. This strategy enabled the Art Ensemble to survive and even thrive while making experimental music and performance art, a truly extraordinary accomplishment. The Art Ensemble shows us how individuals can work cooperatively to achieve great things, even in fields usually regarded as culturally and economically marginal.

We know readers will learn a lot from your book, but what do you hope readers will un-learn? In other words, is there a particular ideology you’re hoping to dismantle?

The members of the Art Ensemble were unwavering in their commitment to living and working as a cooperative, but for them cooperation did not mean giving up their individual identities. Each musician brought something unique to the group, from experiences playing different styles of music to explorations of poetry, theater, and other art forms. They even dressed differently on stage, some members favoring street clothes and others preferring to wear face paint, masks, and African or Asian attire. As the AACM composer and historian George Lewis observed, the members of the Art Ensemble represented “five different articulations of Africanity.”In other words, the Art Ensemble consistently demonstrated that black artists need not conform to anyone else’s image of blackness—a rather radical notion that can only become reality with the support of a fiercely loyal community.

Who are the intellectual heroes that inspire your work?

I have learned something from everyone I studied with and every book I’ve read. But after spending several years researching and writing Message to Our Folks, I consider the members of the Art Ensemble to be my most enduring intellectual and personal heroes. All five group members came from working-class families, and they started, but did not finish, college. Some people tend to assume that individuals from seemingly unremarkable backgrounds have little hope of succeeding, let along changing a world riven by inequity and structural racism. But the five members of the Art Ensemble beat the odds and became essential figures in experimental music and performance art. They also earned a number of individual distinctions: Roscoe Mitchell was an award-winning composer and professor of music composition, Malachi Favors Maghostut was a respected community leader on Chicago’s South Side, Lester Bowie was a tireless advocate for musicians in his adopted hometown of Brooklyn, Shaku Joseph Jarman was a martial artist and Buddhist priest, and Famoudou Don Moye was a polyglot who conducted the Art Ensemble’s business in four languages. If Mitchell, Favors, Bowie, Jarman, and Moye had never met, they might have been able to accomplish some of these things on their own—but I’m convinced that they arrived at their full potential, as musicians and as human beings, because of their shared experiences in the Art Ensemble.

In what way does your book help us imagine new worlds?

Message to Our Folks shows us that progress is within reach if we follow the Art Ensemble’s example: find a few friends who share your dream, work together with diligence, and never give up. The members of the Art Ensemble stayed together for decades, transforming the fields of experimental music and performance art—and, in the process, transforming themselves.

Roberto Sirventis Professor of Political and Social Ethics at Hope International University in Fullerton, CA. He also serves as the Outreach and Mentoring Coordinator for the Political Theology Network.  He is co-author, with fellow BAR contributor Danny Haiphong, of the book, American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News—From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror.

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at [email protected]

BAR Book Forum

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Sam C. Tenorio’s Book, “Jump”
18 September 2024
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book.
BAR Book Forum: André Brock Jr.’s “Distributed Blackness”
André Brock Jr.
BAR Book Forum: André Brock Jr.’s “Distributed Blackness”
15 July 2021
The online aggregation and coherence of Blackness online, absent Black bodies, is what inspired the author’s book.
BAR Book Forum: Kyla Schuller’s Book, “The Biopolitics of Feeling”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Kyla Schuller’s Book, “The Biopolitics of Feeling”
15 July 2021
The very physical category of femaleness was articulated by feminists and non-feminists alike as the sole property of whiteness in the 19th century
BAR Book Forum: Gerald Horne’s Jazz and Justice
Dr. Gerald Horne
BAR Book Forum: Gerald Horne’s Jazz and Justice
23 June 2021
He was stunned to ascertain that Europe was less racist toward those like himself in comparison to his homeland;
BAR Book Forum: Jerrilyn McGregory’s “One Grand Noise”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Jerrilyn McGregory’s “One Grand Noise”
16 June 2021
To break cyclical, systemic oppression requires a functionality that rejects reified notions of governance, global capitalism, and accommodation.
BAR Book Forum: Rachel Afi Quinn’s “Being La Dominicana”
Rachel Afi Quinn
BAR Book Forum: Rachel Afi Quinn’s “Being La Dominicana”
09 June 2021
Dominican racial logic frequently contradicts what US scholars think they know about how race works.
BAR Book Forum: Tiffany N. Florvil’s “Mobilizing Black Germany”
Tiffany N. Florvil
BAR Book Forum: Tiffany N. Florvil’s “Mobilizing Black Germany”
09 June 2021
Black History Month strengthened Black German claims of kinship with their nation and the larger diaspora.
BAR Book Forum: Tamika Nunley’s “At the Threshold of Liberty”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Tamika Nunley’s “At the Threshold of Liberty”
02 June 2021
How Black women gave the term “liberty” its meaning and expanded the scope of liberty in the nation’s capital during the nineteenth century.
BAR Book Forum: Justin Podur and Joe Emersberger’s “Extraordinary Threat”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Justin Podur and Joe Emersberger’s “Extraordinary Threat”
02 June 2021
Western media outlets, NGOs and powerful governments allied with the United States work in unison to deceive people about foreign policy.
BAR Book Forum: Katrinell M. Davis’ “Tainted Tap”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Katrinell M. Davis’ “Tainted Tap”
19 May 2021
Activists and community organizers should be inspired by the work of elders engaged in social change.

More Stories


  • Black Agenda Radio June 27, 2025
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio June 27, 2025
    27 Jun 2025
    In this week’s segment we hear about a peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.
  • Gerald Horne
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Gerald Horne Discusses His Book "The Capital of Slavery: Washington DC 1800 - 1865"
    27 Jun 2025
    Dr. Gerald Horne is an author and historian who currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. Dr. Horne is a prolific…
  • Peace treaty signing
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Congo and Rwanda Agreement Will Benefit the West at the Expense of the Congolese People
    27 Jun 2025
    Maurice Carney is the Executive Director of Friends of the Congo. He joins us from Washington to discuss the ongoing crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda’s continued intervention…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    War Propaganda, State Controlled Media, and the End of African Stream
    25 Jun 2025
    African Stream's Pan-African, anti-imperialist journalistic perspectives made it the target of a state that colludes with corporate media to spread war propaganda.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    POEM: The Beirut Jokebook, June Jordan, 1982
    25 Jun 2025
    “What did the Arab lady say to the Israeli tank?”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us