Sadly, for the most part, these Western barbaric acts are facts. Baraka ruins his own case by extending the argument into the realm of conspiracy theory. I speculate that he's done this for two reasons: Baraka didn't want to espouse an unpopular cause and he wanted to use the poem as a tool in New Jersey politics.

Strangely enough, Baraka was trying to play it safe! Vachel Lindsay provides salvation literally out of the blue through the intervention of the apostles. It would have been easier for Baraka to maintain the correspondence between The Congo and Somebody Blew Up American by having retribution for oppression arrive out of the blue through the mechanism of the suicide jet crash. Just after 9/11 here and there a few dissonant voices did pipe up in feeble cheers for the supposed victims of imperialism. Failing to achieve any sort of audience among the population at large, these off-key singers quietly and quickly exited the stage. It seems that the only one brave (or crazy) enough to persist in expressing this view is Bobby Fischer. Also, it soon was obvious that the entire weight of society was moving to dislodge Osama Bin Laden and his organization from Afghanistan. Baraka likes to be the center of attention by being different. But, he didn't want to be so strange as to wind up universally condemned or -- even worse -- ignored. Collecting and amplifying the chords of conspiracy bouncing around the globe was the way to go. Many elements of the Left were denouncing "Zionism" in terms that would have made Pound proud. And after all, as one theorist of pop culture -- Goebbels -- pointed out, you just can't lose with a Big Lie.

In the second stanza of the poem, Amiri Baraka puts Bret Schundler in the company of David Duke and Jesse Helms. Bret Schundler was Mayor of Jersey City for a decade. Jersey City is just one station away from Newark on the PATH subway. Amiri Baraka spoke in Jersey City at least once while Schundler was Mayor. For the previous forty years, the entrenched political organization let the African-American neighborhoods of Jersey City die and rot. Under the leadership of Bret Schundler, major redevelopment projects reversed this decay. So why would Baraka lump Schundler in with two White supremacists? Baraka might have been trying to make his piece "relevant." At the time of 9/11, Bret Schundler was running for Governor. By mentioning him, Baraka gives the poem an urban New Jersey connection. This ploy also could have had the efffect of assisting the Newark Democratic machine in its efforts to install McGreevey in Trenton.

It's nation time. Boom Booom BOOOM Dadadadadadadadadadad Boom Boom Boom Boom Dadadadad adadadad Baraka, It's Nation Time, 1970 The boomboom that is so vital . . . is a human vitality . . . Daniel Won-gu Kim, African American Review, Vol. 37, Nos. 2-3

Lindsay uses a series of BOOMs from primitive drums to indicate savagery. Throughout his work Baraka uses drum sounds as timing (just like in music) and as the audible expression of life -- like a heartbeat. Though not indicated in the text, in videos of performances of Somebody Blew Up America, Baraka does use a repeated, drumming boom sound. Baraka's use of the Boom sound is similar to Lindsay's in that both refer to drums, but are very different in meaning. Baraka needed a different repeated sound for the inversion. The savage and diabolic HOO is perfect for this purpose. Lindsay uses HOO and hoo-doo to express mindless hooting and backward superstition. Baraka implements Who as a verbal tool wielded by a keen mind questioning and attacking imperialism. The repeated Who serves as a hard horn sound like that used by John Coltrane. As mentioned before, the wise questioning Who acts as a keystone for the arcing image of the exploding owl (oil). Also, the constant Who leads into and presages the sound of the avalanche of debris / horn climax at the end. Baraka often has written of the idea of "magic words" -- words that immediately lead to action and transform reality. (A judge once confirmed this theory by tossing Amiri Baraka into jail for inciting a riot.) So instead of a superstitious hoo-doo, the Who invokes and connects with essential reality. The important case to Baraka is hard bebop's agressive anti-assimilative honking (Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane) against Western hegemonic musicality. Daniel Won-gu Kim, African American Review, Vol. 37, Nos. 2-3

Who blew up America? Now's the time to assign an answer to that question. In the same way that John Coltrane used a metallic pneumatic voice to investigate and blow up "My Favorite Things," Amiri Baraka uses his trademark "magic words."

References:

• African American Review, Vol. 37, Nos. 2-3, 2003, Saint Louis University

• DuPlessis, Rachel Blau, 2001, Genders, Races and Religious Cultures in Modern American Poetry 1908–1934, Cambridge University Press