The Cricket

A rare document of the 1960s Black Arts Movement featuring Albert Ayler, Amiri Baraka, Milford Graves, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor and many more, The Cricket fostered critical and political dialogue for Black musicians and writers.

Edited by poets and writers Amiri Baraka, A.B. Spellman and Larry Neal between 1968 and 1969, and published by Baraka’s New Jersey–based JIHAD productions around the time of the Newark Riots, this experimental music magazine ran poetry, position papers and gossip alongside concert and record reviews and essays on music and politics. Over four mimeographed issues, The Cricket laid out an anticommercial ideology and took aim at the conservative jazz press, providing a space for critics, poets and journalists (including Stanley Crouch, Haki Madhubuti, Ishmael Reed, Sonia Sanchez and Keorapetse Kgositsile) and musicians (including Cecil Taylor, Milford Graves, Sun Ra, Mtume, Albert Ayler and Black Unity Trio) to devise new styles of music writing. This publication gathers all issues of the magazine with an introduction by poet and scholar David Grundy.