Amiri Baraka (born Everett LeRoi Jones on October 7, 1934, in Newark, New Jersey) is a American writer of poetry, drama, essays, and music criticism.
In 1957, he was discharged "undesirably" from United States Airforce service and moved to New York's Greenwich Village, where he rapidly became involved with the bohemian beat movement and became influenced by the styles of Allen Ginsberg, Frank O'Hara, and Charles Olson. In 1960 he went to Cuba, which initiated his transformation into a politically active artist; in 1961, Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note was published. This was followed in 1963 by Blues People: Negro Music in White America, to this day one of the most influential volumes of jazz criticism, especially in regard to the then-beginning Free Jazz movement.