Gil Scott-Heron, A People's Artist, 1949-2011
- Details
- Category: Culture
- Created on Saturday, 28 May 2011 08:53
- Written by David Sharrock
This was first posted on guardian.co.uk.
We were very sad to hear the news that Gil Scott-Heron had died.
His recording career spanned 40 years. Influenced by Richie Havens, John Coltrane, Otis Redding, Jose Feliciano, Billie Holiday, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Nina Simone among others, he combined spoken word, blues, jazz with revolutionary politics to create a musical expression that would inspire future generations.
"You can go into the beat poets and [Allen] Ginsberg and [Bob] Dylan," Chuck D from Public Enemy said, "but Gil Scott-Heron is the manifestation of the modern world."
Gil Scott-Heron dies aged 62
by David Sharrock
The musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron – best known for his pioneering rap The Revolution Will Not Be Televised – has died at the age of 62, having fallen ill after a European trip.
Jamie Byng, his UK publisher, announced the news via Twitter: "Just heard the very sad news that my dear friend and one of the most inspiring people I've ever met, the great Gil Scott-Heron, died today."
Scott-Heron's spoken word recordings helped shape the emerging hip-hop culture. Generations of rappers cite his work as an influence.
He was known as the Godfather of Rap but disapproved of the title, preferring to describe what he did as "bluesology" – a fusion of poetry, soul, blues and jazz, all shot through with a piercing social conscience and strong political messages, tackling issues such as apartheid and nuclear arms.
"If there was any individual initiative that I was responsible for it might have been that there was music in certain poems of mine, with complete progression and repeating 'hooks', which made them more like songs than just recitations with percussion," Scott-Heron wrote in the introduction to his 1990 Now and Then collection of poems.
He was best known for The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, the critically acclaimed recording from his first album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, and for his collaborations with jazz/funk pianist and flautist Brian Jackson.
In The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, first recorded in 1970, he issued a fierce critique of the role of race in the mass media and advertising age. "The revolution will not be right back after a message about a white tornado, white lightning or white people," he sang.
He performed at the No Nukes concerts, held in 1979 at Madison Square Garden. The concerts were organised by a group called Musicians United for Safe Energy and protested against the use of nuclear energy following the meltdown at Three Mile Island. The group included singer-songwriters such as Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and Bonnie Raitt.
Scott-Heron's song We Almost Lost Detroit, written about a previous accident at a nuclear power plant, is sampled on rapper Kanye West's single The People. Scott-Heron's 2010 album, I'm New Here, was his first new studio release in 16 years and was hailed by critics. The album's first song, On Coming From a Broken Home, is an ode to his maternal grandmother, Lillie, who raised him in Jackson, Tennessee, until her death when he was 13. He moved to New York after that.
Scott-Heron was HIV positive and battled drug addiction through most of his career. He spent a year and a half in prison for possession. In a 2009 interview he said that his jail term had forced him to confront the reality of his situation.
"When you wake up every day and you're in the joint, not only do you have a problem but you have a problem with admitting you have a problem." Yet in spite of some "unhappy moments" in the past few years he still felt the need to challenge rights abuses and "the things that you pay for with your taxes".
"If the right of free speech is truly what it's supposed to be, then anything you say is all right."
Scott-Heron's friend Doris Nolan said the musician had died at St Luke's hospital on Friday afternoon. "We're all sort of shattered," she told the Associated Press.
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Comments (15)
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Guest (celticfire)
PermalinkI remember first hearing him as a teenager following WTO protests. It was certainly an experience I remember. Someone gave a burned CD of his songs, and I remember playing 'Winter in America' over and over again. I didn't realize how young he was -- certainly too young to leave us this soon. He will be very missed.
0 Like -
Guest (gregory a butler)
PermalinkGil Scott Heron was a great talent who, tragically, had a decades-long love affair with a certain derivative of the coca leaf.
As another now lost musical great, Rick James, once said, "cocaine's a hell of a drug", and, tragically, he was right.
Like James,Gil Scott Heron was an American original - a great talent who's artistry (and appetites) knew no limits.
He will be missed0 Like -
Guest (Miles Ahead)
PermalinkFor a whole generation, Gil Scott-Heron became an iconic revolutionary poet—his poetry not only chronicling the times but with glimpses into the future.
He captured not only the mood and sentiments of the most oppressed, but his poetry touched and help motivate the aspirations of thousands of others, longing for justice, freedom and a radical or revolutionary rupture, and for the overthrow of the system that keeps the majority shackled—in body and spirit.
Gil Scott-Heron’s poetry, set to music, was (and remains) a very powerful weapon in the people’s arsenal. And just as G.S.H. was influenced, not only by his own experience but by those who were part of the Harlem Renaissance, so too has his poetry influenced so many in the years thereafter.
In 1969 thru the very early 70s, I was attending Night School at Merritt Community College in Oakland. Merritt was bursting with radical and revolutionary politics, essentially run by the Black Panther Party. Education at Merritt was a whole other “thang”—and a reflection of a “sign of the times.”
Took a Poli-Sci class, more or less expecting something dry, but ¾ of the curriculum was devoted to analyzing and discussing Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets.
It is interesting to see how G.S.H.’s “The Revolution Will Not be Televised” has been incorporated into and become a subtext in our shared culture. There were many references, even in the mainstream media to that opus, most recently during the uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia, etc. Except these days, the revolution is being “broadcast” (and somewhat organized) via social media, Twitter, etc.
Thank you Gil Scott-Heron for your many untold contributions to a better world.0 Like -
Guest (KG)
PermalinkThis is one of my favorite Gil Scott-Heron songs. The mood is appropriate for the news, but the theme is about the difficulty of starting something, of building and growing.
Gil-Scott Heron didn't make any albums for many years, but in 2010, he put out "I'm New Here". That album is also about beginning, starting over at least. It was a successful record and introduced his music to a new generation of people. If he had to go, I am glad it was now and not two years ago.
This is awful news. I hope that many people are introduced to the whole body of his work, not just the poems. I thought he was a beautiful singer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvHNmx41fo0&w=640&h=5100 Like -
Guest (El Burro)
PermalinkMy father used to play Gill Scott Heron records for me when I was really young and Whitey on the Moon has always been my favorite piece of his. It's truly sad that he passed away.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtBy_ppG4hY0 Like -
Guest (Adolfo V.)
PermalinkA beautiful piece by Gil Scott-Heron! We'll miss you brother.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOUMvjw9RlA&w=425&h=349]0 Like -
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