FESTIVALS AND FUNERALS by [African-American] CORTEZ, Jayne

New York: Phrase Text, 1971. First edition. INSCRIBED by author: "To Gwen/Keep on keepin'/Jayne Cortez. Not paginated. 8.5" x 5.5" Cream-colored glossy wraps with brown writing and drawings by Mel Edwards. Some spotting to covers, else very good. Jayne Cortez is the author of Pisstained Stairs and The Monkey Man's Wares. She is a literary and performance poet and a significant figure in the development of jazz-poetry readings and recordings. The immense reputation Cortez has garnered worldwide comes from her performances combining live music, especially jazz, with powerfully spoken poetry. The strength of her performance, however, does not detract from her achievement as a literary figure. Cortez received the Before Columbus FoundationAmerican Book Award for excellence in literature in 1980 and the New York Foundation for the Arts Award for poetry in 1987. In addition, Cortez was twice honored with a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship. Cortez's commitment to African American artistic expression is multi-faceted and consistent. She has been heralded for meshing surrealist images with raw, descriptive detail. Her tone is serious and sometimes sarcastic but always full of pleasure, pain and politics.Cortez cofounded the Watts Repertory Theatre Company in 1964, where she remained artistic director until 1970. This was her formal initiation into the world of performance: directing, acting, and reciting poetry to live audiences. By 1972 Cortez had moved to New York City and published two volumes of poetry—Pisstained Stairs and the Monkey Man's Wares (1969) and Festivals and Funerals (1971)—before founding her own publishing company, Bola Press. Jayne Cortez's involvement in the Black Arts movement and her successful development of a jazz-poetry mediating between the likes of Amiri Baraka and The Last Poets has earned her a definitive place in the African American literary tradition. Her feminist ideology make Cortez's work acutely unique in its attempt to liberate black voices through artistic activism. Cortez is director of the film "Yari Yari: Black Women Writers and the Future," organizer of "Slave Routes the Long Memory" and "Yari Yari Pamberi: Black Women Writer Dissecting Globalization," both conferences were held at New York University. She is president of the Organization of Women Writers of Africa, Inc. and is on screen in the films: "Women In Jazz" and "Poetry In Motion.’