Amiri Baraka / Leroi Jones 'New Music - New Poetry'

This 1982 live recording captures poet, playwright and political activist Amiri Baraka alongside avant-jazz luminaries David Murray and Steve McCall. Here, the trio use the stage as a platform for a seamless blend of spoken word and improvisation, exploring themes of race, politics, culture and artistic responsibility. Musically, the album contains some of Murray and McCall's most responsive and dynamic playing, with the pair in remarkably close dialogue around Baraka's powerful prose. The headline attractions are undoubtedly 'The Last Revolutionary' and the two-part 'Class Struggle In Music', where poetry and jazz become so closely intertwined that neither feels complete without the other.