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Grackle, The

“Ron Welburn began his prolific career in music (and literary) criticism in the late 1960s. He helped found the important journal The Grackle in 1976. Although oriented towards free jazz, coverage extended to Latin music, an interview with Ralph Ellison, a Welburn piece on Eddie Jefferson and Joe Lee Wilson. It maintained a strict policy of publishing work by people of African descent. Welburn recounted being asked by several white writers to be published in The Grackle; his consistent response was that the purpose of the magazine was to provide an outlet for black writers on jazz, whose work was not being accepted by established jazz magazines.”

 W.S. Tkweme,
Vindicating Karma: Jazz and the Black Arts Movement (2007)

 

The Grackle