Amiri Baraka on Writing about Jazz, Etcetera
What strikes most about this interview from 1991 is Baraka’s ability to defend people who he might have been told were his enemies or foils. He was never naive enough to turn on everyone with whom he disagreed, and never the kind of coward that told others what he thought of you but couldn’t say it or show to your face. This temperament made him one of the best music writers and poets who ever lived, because there was no limit to his curiosity, to the extent that some of his so-called militancy was tempered by sentimentality and real heart, which is probably how it should be, not so ruthless an agenda it has to lie about what it loves.