Following a weekend in which many of us spent our time digging out from winter’s sneakiest of previews, today’s edition of Red Bank oRBit offers a chance to dig on the presence of one of New Jersey’s most consistently confrontational, controversial (but incandescently energetic) international celebrities a man who, at the recently celebrated age of 75, has scarcely stopped generating fervent followers or fevered foes.
Poet, professor, pioneer of the Black Arts Movement, paragon of social protest Amiri Baraka (right) has all these identifiers in his column, but it’s through his longtime standing as one of the most astute observers of jazz music that the Newark native visits Red Bank this weekend, as Gilda Rogers and Frank Talk Art Bistro host the author in a Kwanzaa-time reading from his new book Digging: The Afro American Soul of American Classical Music.
Monmouth County poet and artist Kathy Polenberg chats with Professor Baraka as we near a brief holiday break then tune in tomorrow as Dustin Racioppi examines the burgeoning cultural phenomenon that is The Bouncing Souls, right here in Red Bank oRBit!
