If you have the chance, you should listen to this work as it was meant, with jazz in the background built to shape and reinforce the lyric voice of the work as a whole. However, as a book alone and apart from other genres, this book is still a worthwhile read, particularly as a whole with the poems moving together and unseparated.

Hughes' voice here is slightly different from what the casual reader might otherwise be familiar with; in fact, I think I'd call this something of a narrative manifesto for civil rights, built from the rhythms of jazz and poetry combined. Structured like an album, the work never lets readers forget that jazz is the backbone of the poetry. In the margins, Hughes provides descriptions of the music, something like stage directions in a play, and then liner notes in the end of the book for the reader less familiar with either the history or the culture of what he's discussed.

In the end, this is a stand-out work that's unlike anything else I've come across, meshing references to historical figures and musicians with the rhythms of jazz and the ideas of civil rights, history, and the powers of love and belief in revolutionary efforts. This is a challenging fascinating work, well worth the time. ( )

dust jacket, great shape