Sterling Plumpp

Sterling Plumpp contrasts the rituals of Africa with African American rituals that have emerged in the twentieth century.

Home/Bass ""brings to the forefront the myriad of folks that inhabit the up-South streets of Chicago or the unaltered roads of Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, and other pockets inhabited by Blacks throughout the South. Sterling Plumpp has lived with these folks--sharecroppers, preachers, misplaced Mississippi blues men and women. He has been in their houses, has dined at their tables, and has drunk at the bars on the corners. He is not a stranger to their articulations--voices that call to him from a Natchez cemetery, from the outskirts of some Mississippi Delta town, or settle on Maxwell Street in Chicago--all through the observant and often omnipresent lens of blues artist Willie Kent. Plumpp is always mindful of the slow, steady rhythms of the blues, not as backdrop, but as the foundation and framework on which he structures the components of this book. With the publication of ""Home/Bass, ""Plumpp has once again captured the very essence of language and the blues from the inside out.

""HornMan"" is a poetry collection dedicated to the legendary musician, Von Freeman.

Poetry that comes out of the jazz music of African American artists.

This collection is the third in a trilogy of poetic works created by Sterling Plumpp to allow audiences to explore the language of music articulated through the nuances of jazz, blues, and bebop. The poetry in Velvet Be Bop Kente Cloth utilizes distinct rhythms and a non-conventional use of line and line breaks. It also draws upon the musical innovations established by Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillispie, and others.