Va tutto bene - It's All Good

by John Sinclair, Matteo Guarnaccia (Editor)

Questo libro è un'antologia fatta di storie, articoli, poesie, con tanto di colonna sonora consigliata, che rende omaggio alla leggenda dell'Altra America, quella che ha stregato e conquistato il mondo senza aver bisogno di ricorrere ad armi e ricatti economici. Un documentario "a caccia" di quella suprema forma di arte afroamericana, il jazz/blues, che come un virus ha colpito l'autore sin da bambino, rendendolo incapace di sopportare ingiustizie e discriminazioni. Lo scrittore racconta la decadenza della culla dell'industria automobilistica, Motor City, gli splendori e le miserie dell'utopia controculturale e la sempre sorprendente vitalità della cultura nera. Una storia che attraversa le rivolte dei ghetti neri ("rivolte" e non "rivolte razziali" come lui tiene a precisare) e lo scatenamento dionisiaco hippie. Dalla Detroit black e beatnik al periodo psichedelico, dal delta del Mississippi, culla del blues, all'esilio ad Amsterdam.

288 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2009

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

John Sinclair (born October 2, 1941) is an American poet, writer, and political activist from Flint, Michigan. Sinclair's defining style is jazz poetry, and he has released most of his works in audio formats. Most of his pieces include musical accompaniment, usually by a varying group of collaborators dubbed Blues Scholars.

As an emerging young poet in the mid-1960s, Sinclair took on the role of manager for the Detroit rock band MC5. The band's politically charged music and its Yippie core audience dovetailed with Sinclair's own radical development. In 1968, while still working with the band, he conspicuously served as a founding member of the White Panther Party, a militantly anti-racist socialist group and counterpart of the Black Panthers.

Arrested for possession of marijuana in 1969, Sinclair was given ten years in prison. The sentence was criticized by many as unduly harsh, and it galvanized a noisy protest movement led by prominent figures of the 1960s counterculture. Various public and private protests culminated in the "John Sinclair Freedom Rally" at Ann Arbor's Crisler Arena in December 1971. The event brought together celebrities including John Lennon and Yoko Ono; musicians David Peel, Stevie Wonder, Phil Ochs and Bob Seger, Archie Shepp and Roswell Rudd; poets Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders; and countercultural speakers including Abbie Hoffman, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Jerry Rubin, and Bobby Seale. Three days after the rally, Sinclair was released from prison when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the state's marijuana statutes were unconstitutional but he remained in litigation – his case against the government for illegal domestic surveillance was successfully pleaded to the US Supreme Court in United States v. U.S. District Court (1972).

Sinclair eventually left the US and took up residency in Amsterdam. He continues to write and record and, since 2005, has hosted a regular radio program, The John Sinclair Radio Show, as well as produced a line-up of other shows on his own radio station, Radio Free Amsterdam.

Sinclair was the first person to purchase recreational marijuana when it became legal in Michigan on December 1, 2019.

Reviews

[Hex75 · Rating 4 out of 5]

un simpatico zibaldone di uno dei principali esponenti della controcultura dei 60s americani: poesie, articoli, testi, memorie, magari con qualche reducismo di troppo ma sempre sincere."never trust a hippie" recitava (poi citata da altri) una altri) una vecchia spilla dei sex pistols: ma in questo caso si può...

[Alessandro Lischi · Rating 4 out of 5]

E' piuttosto fedele a ciò che dice la scheda del libro, è semplicemente una raccolta di scritti più o meno recenti di Sinclair. Lo consiglio più che altro ai fan sfegatati di Sinclair, perchè ciò di cui parla potrebbe non risultare poi tanto interessante a chi non lo conosce un poco

[Bob Mabbitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading about revolution (real or imagined) is always more fun than reading about what somebody else thinks about music.

[UM-Flint · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vince says, "Kick out the jams with Michigan's most famous old, hippie radical. Also, a 1964 graduate of UM-F."