WI: Mr. Madhubuti, What is art?

HM: Art is the spiritual and political connection to any people who have control of their cultural imperatives. Art is what makes us whole. Art gives us our values. We have four schools in Chicago and each of the schools is book based and art based. The arts feed different sides of the mind. The arts allow children to develop aesthetically, to not only look at what’s beautiful and beneficial but also to be able to analyze it. Then, we move to book culture. We’re dealing with a different side of the brain, so we don’t feel that we can become a whole people without art.

WI: What do you want art to do?

HM: To do its work. The artist of any culture is the freest people, because they are not beholding to anybody accept the people; and from the people comes the art. We try to express, therefore, what they give to us and give it back to them so we can all grow and develop. Art is moving toward control, or, to put it another way, influencing those institutions that forever influence us. As artists we must not only be writers and poets and choreographers and filmmakers, we also must be business men and women.

WI: How do you measure the arts’ impact on young people?

HM: Well, if you’re talking about young people internationally, look at rap and hip-hop. It’s influenced the world. The Black Arts Movement changed the world. When we became involved, we changed the conversation. We stopped being Negroes and became Black and African. We essentially said if anybody is going to talk about us it’s going to be us. We stopped taking messages from the oppressive culture and began to say we are going to define ourselves at every level of human involvement. That’s what the art does.

WI: What were the goals and aspirations of the Black Arts Movement?

HM: The goals always were liberation and freedom. It’s always been a freedom movement as it is today, and we’re still on that same track. 

WI: Thank you.

Interview with Haki Madhubuti
On the Arts
By Joseph Young
WI Staff Writer
Thursday, April 24, 2008

Haki Madhubuti, at 68, has published more than 20 books that cover the gambit of literary genres. For all that, however, he is best known for his poetry. He also was one of the early voices in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. Other well known artists involved with the Movement included Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, Sonia Sanchez and Nikki Giovanni.

The Movement spurred political activism and arts institutions such as the Black Arts Repertory Theatre, and led to the creation of African American Studies programs in colleges and universities.

Madhubuti granted the Informer an interview on April 16, at Washington D.C.’s Georgetown University’s Lannan Literary Symposium and Festival where he served as a panelist. Themed “Creativity, Resistance, Liberation: Forms of Political Engagement in the Arts of the 1960s,” Madhubuti talked about advancing the power of Blacks through the arts.