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Transcription: [00:06:47]
{SPEAKER name="Maulana Karenga"}
-definite, social historical setting- a soc- a definite historical content, and we must draw sustenance from that. Like I said, art uh uh you were referring to the mutual interaction that Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, and some of the other poets had. Uh it was the framework that I referred to earlier in terms of developing uh or attempting to develop or making a contribution toward the development of a black aesthetic. And I'd argue that there a three basic elements of a real black aesthetic. And that would point to the fact that all art has to have three qualities, one that it has to be functional. It has to have some social purpose, some message, it can't be an abstraction. Second, it must be collective. That is, it must be from the people for the people, again referring to what I said that the great artist is the one that takes the particular experience and gives it universal value and meaning, okay. Third, I think that a necessary element of the black aesthetic is that it be committing. That it commits us to a new world, to a new man, woman, and child, to a new society with which we can live and love freely, and in which we can shape our own life and our own image.

[00:07:55]
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[00:08:08]

{SPEAKER name="Brooks B. Robinson"}

You've been listening to a discussion on the role of literature as an agent of social change with Dr. Maulana Karenga and Professors Edris Makward and Sarah Fabio. Now Dr. Karenga reads his works.

[00:08:25]

{SPEAKER name="Maulana Karenga"}

This is called "When Beaches Began Singing Summer." I tried to, as I said before, I be, try to interweave love and struggle all the time, so even though I talk love, I try to interweave struggle also. And when beaches began to sing summer, we came and walked through morning with the waves, listened to their heavy rhythm on the rocks and enjoyed their salt spray, and the sun dryness of arriving summer air. We talked beauty and took pictures peering through a hole in the hardness of this world, we bent over shells and shared moments made especially for our memory.