RADIO FREE AMSTERDAM
ABOUT JOHN
John Sinclair is a poet from Deroit who has cut a wide swath as a prolific cultural worker, an innovative bard who sets his verse to music from the blues and jazz tradition, a dynamic performer and bandleader who has collaborated with scores of outstanding musicians in performance and recordings, an acclaimed editor, leading music journalist, award-winning radio broadcaster and record producer, an iconoclastic educator and lecturer, and a passionate crusader against the War on Drugs for more than 50 years Sinclair founded and directed the Detroit Artists Workshop, managed the MC-5, formed the White Panther Party, produced the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, directed the Detroit Jazz Center, taught Blues History in the music department at Wayne State University, edited City Arts Sinclair has collaborated with a brilliant array of contemporary musicians, from saxophone giants Archie Shepp, Marion Brown, Daniel Carter and Earl Turbinton to hornmen David Amram, Michael Ray, Charles Moore, James Andrews and Kermit Ruffins, guitarists Wayne Kramer, Walter “Wolfman” Washington, Willie King, Jim McCarty and Jeff “Baby” Grand, and West African griots Bala Tounkare and Guelel Kuumba. 1978, with John Lennon and Yoko Ono after they helped free me. Photo taken in Detroit tavern. Sinclair has released more than 25 CDs, including several with his band of Blues Scholars, and his recent books include It’s All Good—A John Sinclair Reader, Song of
Quarterly for the Detroit Council of the Arts, produced Piano Night at Tipitina’s for the Professor Longhair Foundation and the “live” broadcast of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival for WWOZ-FM. He spent three years in prison for marijuana offenses, overthrew the Michigan marijuana laws, helped institute Ann Arbor’s historic $5 fine for possession of weed, founded the Ann Arbor Hash Bash and served as High Priest of the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam.
Praise: Homage to John Coltrane, Sun Ra Interviews & Essays (editor), a book of blues verse called Fattening Frogs For Snakes, and i mean you: a book for penny.
John Sinclair was born in Flint, Michigan on October 2, 1941. He attended Albion College and graduated from the University of Michigan-Flint College in 1964 with an A.B. in English Literature. At college he began writing poetry and music criticism and edited the school paper, The Word. Sinclair pursued graduate studies in American Literature at Wayne State University in Detroit, completing his master’s thesis on William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch while beginning his career as a poet, journalist, music presenter, concert and festival producer, music historian, radio broadcaster and educator.
ARCHIVES
John and Leni Sinclair were leaders of the counterculture movement in Michigan, organizers of radical social, political, and cultural endeavors primarily in the areas of music, poetry, graphic design, and community welfare projects. Materials in this online collection include digitized versions of analog sound recordings held by the Bentley Historical Library. In 1991 John Sinclair donated his Detroit Jazz Collection of original recordings from the Detroit Artists Workshop, Detroit Jazz Center, Paradise Theater/Orchestra Hall, and many other venues and sources in Detroit and Michigan along with posters, printed information, and other materials to the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit in order that these historical materials would be available to Detroiters in perpetuity. Beginning in 2017 Art Yard Records of London will be releasing in association with the Wright Museum albums of music produced by John Sinclair from the Detroit Jazz Archives featuring artists including Charles Moore, Ron English, Lyman Woodard, the Detroit Contemporary 4, the Artists Workshop Music Ensemble, and a series of Detroit jazz composers recorded with orchestral accompaniment at Orchestra Hall/The Paradise Theater in 1979-81 Since the first John Sinclair Radio Show was posted on November 22, 2004 and the establishment of Radio Free Amsterdam on January 1, 2005, each radio program released on Radio Free Amsterdam has been archived and kept available for listening on demand. The Radio Free Amsterdam Archive contains every episode from the station’s inception until the original site was retired as of December 31, 2016 to make way for our new broadcast service, directed by the John Sinclair Foundation.BENTLEY HISTORICAL LIBRARY – UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY (The John Sinclair Detroit Jazz Collection)
RADIO FREE AMSTERDAM ARCHIVES
LITERARY
WORK
POETRY
Guitar Army (Second Edition)
It’s All Good: A John Sinclair Reader (2008)
Song of Praise: Homage to John Coltrane
Va Tutto Bene (It’s All Good)
Peyote Mind
Fattening Frogs For Snakes: Delta Sound Suite
Guitar Army (Original)
Poetry Archives
…and more
BOOKS
Always Know
It’s All Good
No Money Down
If I Could Be With You
I Mean You
Full Moon Night
Full Circle…
