He fought the powers that be and paid the price. But he also taught us that politics plus soul equals movement
When Gil Scott-Heron asked in the mid-70s: "Sister/woman have you heard from Johannesburg?" I hadn't actually. I was too young. Too uninformed, maybe, to know really what was going on. He also told us the news was unreliable. And that the situation of black people in America was not far from that of those who would end up rioting two years later in Soweto.
That was important. But what was important to me at the time was that I liked the songs. This was joyous music: politics with soul. And soul meant movement. It meant a revolution you could dance to.
Is that wrong? Not to me ? not to him, I believe. I didn't know the man, I knew the music. As he said himself, sardonically, Gil Scott-Heron was "unknowable but impossible to forget".
I am not sure I recognise him from some of the obituaries. We all have our remixes, I guess. He was a seer, yes. A chaos magician. He was kind, maybe. But he was an addict and a hustler. He spent his entire life writing his own obituary. He knew what happened to black men. He knew about where the hatred was. He knew it could be inside a family. A home. Inside a prison ? a prison of your own making.
Others more qualified than me can tell you the hows and whys of the music and its making. For me his album, Me and the Devil, where he claims the blues and takes them from the past into the future, is genius pure and simple. "I can take care of you," he sings. He couldn't take care of himself. He sounds and looks a thousand years old. This is a record of pain and immense power.
He did, of course, fight the powers that be, and explain how that power played out in the lives of those with no fight left. He paid the price, personally and politically. I can't get with this whole "godfather of rap" thing ? hip-hop would have happened anyway. Music is always a collaboration and he always acknowledged this. But what do I know, except that most of the much-touted new conscious hip-hop has yet to reach the level he was at some 40 years ago?
I cant remember where I first saw him, in the early-80s. For some reason I always associate seeing him with seeing Fela Kuti for the first time. "Music is the weapon of the future," said Fela, another kind of prophet.
By then we all knew because of Gil that the revolution would not be televised. We knew about Detroit. We knew this ain't really life, this ain't nothing but a movie. A B-movie. We knew about Ronald Reagan ("mandate my ass"). We knew and were changed by what he knew. He changed our world. And we danced to those changes. We could not stand still. We had to move. We knew that voice, pitched low but light. Revolution was irresistible once you heard that. It was anger as seduction, and in between songs he would talk and talk in a way that you could listen to forever.
And we did.
And we will.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/may/31/gil-scott-heron-revolution
No comments:
Post a Comment