Remembering the Revolutionary Life of Gil Scot Heron (1/4/49 -27/5/11)

Gilbert “Gil” Scott-Heron  was an American soul and jazz poet, musician, and author, known primarily for his work as a spoken word performer in the 1970s and ’80s.

Born in Chicago, Illinois on April 1, 1948 to parents Bobbie Scott Heron, a librarian, and Giles (Gil) Heron, a Jamaican professional soccer player who  played for Celtic. He grew up in Lincoln, Tennessee and the Bronx, New York, where he attended DeWitt Clinton High School. Heron attended Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and received an M.S. in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University.

 By age 13, Scott-Heron had written his first collection of poems. He published his first novel, The Vulture, a murder mystery whose central themes include the devastating effects of drugs on urban black life, in 1968 at age 19.  Four years later,  Scott-Heron published his second novel, The Nigger Factory (1972), which, set on the campus of a historically black college (HBCU), focused on the conflicting ideology between the more traditionally Eurocentric-trained administrators; the younger, more nationalistic students—founders of  Members of Justice for Meaningful Black Education (MJUMBE); and the more moderate students and their leader, Earl Thomas.

 Scott-Heron,  is however, best known as a musician and songwriter. In 1970, he released his first album, New Black Poet Small Talk at 125th and Lennox,. The liner notes of that first album credit the influence of Malcolm X and Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton alongside that of Billie Holiday and John Coltrane. Gil Scott-Heron’s art grew out of social movements and fed back into them.

Then came. Pieces of Man (1971), Free Will (1972) and Winter in America (1974). These albums include such classic signature works as “The Revolution Will Not be Televised,”  “Lady Day and John Coltrane,” “Whitey on the Moon,” “No Knock On My Brother’s Head,” and “Home Is Where the Hatred Is.”

One of his most critically acclaimed albums, Winter in America, was released  as the strongest waves of the revolutionary tide of the ’60s and ’70s were already ebbing into the Nixonian Reaction. The U.S. military had finally withdrawn from Vietnam, and other institutional gains from the movement could be seen in the form of legislation like the Clean Air Act of 1970 or the formation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). But following the capitalist recession of 1973, the Western world was mired in stagflation: inflation coupled with economic stagnation and high unemployment. The title track laments those dynamic parts of America that “never had a chance to grow.”

 Known for his oral word performance, Scott-Heron walked onto the international stage simultaneously as did many of the Black Arts Movement poets, including Amiri Baraka,https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2014/01/amiri-bakara-lee-roi-jones-71034-9114.html Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez, and Nikki Giovanni.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2016/06/happy-birthday-nikki-giovanni-7643.html He shared their conviction that art must be functional and, therefore, as artist and communal leader, he must embrace his role as a significant political voice inevitably committed to the liberation of black people. Scott-Heron’s cacophonous voice resonated as well with that of Malcolm X, the militant prophet-leader of the Nation of Islam who inspired a generation to address the needs and condition of the urban black masses.  The electric, edgy, angry sounds he created with his fusion of soul, jazz, blues, and poetry—often in collaboration with musician Brian Jackson—make him a forerunner to a later generation of rap artists, particularly such socially conscious rappers as Tupac Shakur, Jay Z and Dr. Dre.

 The author of songs dealing head-on with the abuse of drugs and alcohol, songs like “The Bottle” and “Angel Dust,” went through his own struggles with substance abuse in his later years. It is difficult not to see this personal struggle as an expression of the historical demobilization and depoliticization that overtook the movements that meant so much to him

Small Talk at 125th and Lenox,  featured the first version of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The track has since been referenced and parodied extensively in pop culture.A diatribe against mass media’s trivialization of social upheaval and the seeming paralysis of those who watch via television.

Regarding the song, he said: "The revolution takes place in your mind. Once you change your mind and decide that there's something wrong that you want to effect that's when the revolution takes place. But first you have to look at things and decide what you can do. 'Something's wrong and I have to do something about it. I can effect this change.' Then you become a revolutionary person. It's not all about fighting. It's not all about going to war. It's about going to war with the problem and deciding you can effect that problem. When you want to make things better you're a revolutionary."

Gil Scott-Heron wrote this song when he was 21 years old. He would perform and release several reworkings of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" in his lifetime.The lyrics build a strong, intelligent and humorous case against American consumerism:

"The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal."
"The revolution will not make you look five pounds thinner."

These words remind us that big business owns almost everything we see on television. Scott-Heron contends that if the common people were to rise to rebellion, there will be no news coverage of the event.
Gil Scott-Heron spoke on the poetry in this song: 

"All of those poems do not just represent me. They represent the people I know and the people I see. You have to separate the problems that effect the whole community from the problems that effect just the individual person. A good poet feels what his community feels. He feels what the organism that he's a part of feels. And one of the problems that our community was facing as a whole was the fact that we were being discriminated against and there was something that needed to be done."

 

The electric, edgy, angry sounds he created with his fusion of soul, jazz, blues, and poetry,often in collaboration with musician Brian Jackson, make him a forerunner to a later generation of rap artists, particularly such socially conscious rappers as Tupac Shakur, Jay Z and Dr. Dre.

In 1975 Scott-Heron became the first artist to sign with Clive Davis’s new Arista label. His second Arista release, From South  Africa to South Carolina , contained the energetic “Johannes-burg,” a proclamation of solidarity with blacks in then apartheid  white-ruled South Africa that reached the Top 40. “Our vibration is based on creative solidarity: trying to influence the black community toward the same kind of dignity and self-respect that we all know is necessary to live,” Scott-Heron  said  “We’re trying to put out survival kits on wax.”  Gil Scott’s 1976 song would become an anthem against white minority rule  in South Africa and the struggle for liberation in that country.

 By the late 1970s Scott-Heron had developed a serious cocaine habit, and he later progressed to freebasing. Drugs were his escape from the pressures of the music business, and they were also a refuge from difficulties in his personal life. He had a turbulent marriage to actress Brenda Sykes that ended in divorce, as well as several on-again, off-again romances, and he had four children from different relationships. “Love is a difficult thing for me to experience,” he once wrote poignantly. As his addiction took its inevitable toll on his body, his career, and his life, he was unable to admit the seriousness of his problem or accept help from anyone, even those who cared about him deeply. 

Scott-Heron parted company with Jackson in the early 1980s and explored jazzier territory as well as the techno-funk that had begun to dominate black pop. As well as exploring more personal issues, he continued attacking specific political targets. The U.S. presidential election of conservative Republican Ronald Reagan.“Ray-gun,” as Scott-Heron was fond of calling him,unleashed a further torrent of musical scorn.

In 1980 Scott-Heron also released his anti-nuclear anthem “Shut ‘Em Down” on the all-star No Nukes concert album. However, as the decade advanced, Scott-Heron was increasingly isolated in his political militancy.

In 1984 Arista released The Best of Gil Scott-Heron, but would drop the artist the following year. He collaborated with jazz legend Miles Davis on “Let Me See Your I.D.” for the anti-apartheid benefit album Sun City, but otherwise stopped recording for several years, though he continued to tour and a documentary film was made about him. Unfortunately for fans, most of his albums went out of print. With the exception of the Best of collection and the earlier The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, much of his work would not be available on CD for many years. The re-release in 1988 of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised reintroduced to a new generation the Scott-Heron classic “Whitey on the Moon,” a satirical comment on American socioeconomic values,

He shunned conventional pop stardom but nevertheless became a star, playing to large crowds and winning abundant critical praise. I was lucky to be able to see him perform on a number of occassions in the late nineteen eighties, once at Glastonbury, can't remember the correct year, perhaps someone could remind me, and 3 times more in London at C.N.D and anti apartheid rallies one I think in Hyde Park? .

 Apparently the era I saw him perform, his talent was on the wain, but I did not notice, I did not care, all I remember was a powerful, incendiary, sweet , soulful, smoky voice , gently rallying us against the cruelty of the world. He became a bit of a hero to me, so it was sad not to have him around for a while, but the thing is, for some of us he never did go away. His songs of freedom lifting us through our sombre histories, stirring and always inspiring.His sad songs and his melancohly somehow reaching and getting through.

He briefly returned to the studio for 1994’s Spirits. That album featured the track “Message to the Messengers,” in which Scott-Heron cautions the hip-hop generation that arose in his absence to use its newfound power responsibly.  “I ain’t comin’ at you with no disrespect/All I’m sayin’ is you damn well got to be correct/Because if you’re gonna be speaking for a whole generation/And you know enough to handle their education/Be sure you know the real deal about past situations/And ain’t just repeating what you heard on a local TV station.”

He used his voice to chart the injustices and cruelty of American society for years, raging against its  hypocricy,with wit, empathy, and justified anger, the irony being, it was this very same system that turned on him, culminating in jail sentences and stretches due to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, found with too much gear in his pockets, labelled and spat out. Sure he had problems, but when this man needed help, what did they do? They locked him up, that was really going to cure him, no I don't think so, just another sad reflection of a cold stinkin' rotten system.Anyway in my opinion a brave, charismatic figure, He never stood on fences, his language and honesty apparent to all who witnessed him.. 

He continued to perform, and he received new attention thanks to the rise of hip-hop, but he was in no shape to work regularly, and his last years included several stints in jail for drug possession. Followng After his release from prison in 2007,  in 2010 released a new album, I'm New Here, to widespread critical acclaim.
Although he was on good terms with his children, he died alone  aged 62, on May 27, 2011, in a New York hospital,  where he apparently told the staff he had no next of kin. His daughter Gia, saw this as typical of her father’s self-protective pride: “Maybe he didn’t want people to see him in that weak and vulnerable position.”

 In 2012, he posthumously received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and two years later was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame for “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”

Gil Scott-Heron’s voice and songs  continue to project the strength, the anger, the humanity and the beauty of struggles in our own time whose deeply political words continues to inspire many. In the tapestry of musical history, Gil Scott-Heron occupies a unique and enduring place. His life and work stand as a testament to the transformative potential of artistry, as well as a rallying cry for justice and social change. Gil should remind us of the profound impact that one individual can have in shaping the cultural zeitgeist and challenging the status quo.  .His legacy as a musician, poet and activist is immeasurable.

 

It's Your World - Gl Scot Heron

 

 The ground beneath my feet
I know was made for me
There is no any one place where I belong
My spirit's meant to be free
And soon now everyone will see
Life was made for us to be what we wanna be!

And it's your world
It's yours and yours and yours
And what you see
Was not meant for me
It's your world
But you don't have to be lonely
'Cause in your world
You are truly free!

The thoughts that fill my mind
Are a very special kind
Because they're home to me and me alone
And then I realize
That we all have a home inside
That was meant for us to be what we wanna be

And it's your world
It's yours and yours and yours
And what you see
Was not meant for me
It's your world
But you don't have to be lonely
'Cause in your world, you are truly free!

Music of life fills my soul
Music of love makes me feel whole
As human history unfolds before my eyes
My spirit's meant to be free
And soon now everyone's will be
It's your right to be whatever you wanna be!

And it's your world
It's yours and yours and yours
And what you see
Was not necessarily meant for me
It's your world
But you don't have to be lonely
'Cause in your world
You are truly free!

And it's your world
It's yours and yours and yours
And what you see
It was not meant for me
It's your world
But you don't have to be lonely
'Cause in your world
You are truly free!

And it's your world
It's yours and yours and yours
And what you see
It was not meant for me
It's your world
But you don't have to be lonely
'Cause in your world
You are truly free!

You are truly free
(So go 'head) Be what you wanna be
You are truly free
(So go 'head) Be what you wanna be
You are truly free
(So go 'head) Be what you wanna be
You are truly free
(So go 'head) Be what you wanna be 

 

 

The World - Gil Scot Heron

 
The world!
Planet Earth; third from the Sun of a gun, 360 degrees.
And as the new worlds emerge
stay alert. Stay aware.
Watch the Eagle! Watch the Bear!
Earthquaking, foundation shaking,
bias breaking, new day making change.
Accumulating, liberating, educating, stimulating change!
Tomorrow was born yesterday.
From insde the rib or people cage
the era of our firdt blood stage was blotted or erased
or TV screened r defaced.
Remember there's a revolution going in in the world.
One blood of the early morning
revolves to the one idea of our tomorrow.
Homeboy, hold on!
Now more than ever all the family must come together.
Ideas of freedom and harmony, great civilizations
yesterday brought today will bring tomorrow.
We must be about
earthquaking, liberating, investigating
and new day making change in
the world. 

 

The Revolution Will Not be Televisised

 

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out foreeer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
About a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution WILL put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live. 

 

 I Think I'll Call it Morning - Gil Scot Heron

'm gonna take myself a piece of sunshine
and paint it all over my sky.
Be no rain. Be no rain.
I'm gonna take the song from every bird
and make them sing it just for me.
Be no rain.
And I think I'll call it morning from now on.
Why should I survive on sadness
convince myself I've got to be alone?
Why should I subscribe to this world's
madness
knowing that I've got to live on?

I think I'll call it morning from now on.
I'm gonna take myself a piece of sunshine
and paint it all over my sky.
Be no rain. Be no rain.
I'm gonna take the song from every bird
and make them sing it just for me.
Why should I hang my head?
Why should I let tears fall from my eyes
when I've seen everything that there is to see
and I know that there ain't no sense in crying!
I know that there ain't no sense in crying!
I think I'll call it morning from now on.