Gil
Scott-Heron
From Big O - October 14, 2012 – 4:20 am
On
May 27, 2011, poet, spoken-word artist, musician and author Gil
Scott-Heron died in New York. He was 62. Randy Shields still remembers
the man.
The commanding voice that named the names, that directed a musical
letter of rage (air mail special) to whitey on the moon, and lived to
see a revolt (if not a revolution) televised from Egypt, has died. Gil
Scott-Heron died at age 62 in NYC’s St. Luke’s Hospital.
I don’t know what age I was when I first heard Scott-Heron wittily
and boldly lambasted Nixon and Spearhead Agnew and Ronnie Raygun and
Attilla the Haig and Marlin Perkins and Papa Doc Bush - they and their
America didn’t mean shit to him (and me and millions of other Americans)
and it felt damned good to hear it. One of his favorite targets was
Americans’ greatest religious experience: getting something for nothing -
specifically, the ripping off of black art, music and culture by
(mostly) white capitalists while its creators often died paupers.
He declined the title of “Godfather of Rap” and it was easy to see
why. I was blown away by NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton” the first couple
weeks I listened to it - the anger, the violence, fighting back against
racist cops, the clarity about who your enemies are, the cheapness of
life worn like a badge. But I found that I couldn’t keep listening to it
indefinitely - the music, especially, was both depressing and boring.
And that’s what Gil Scott-Heron and his brilliant longtime
collaborator Brian Jackson figured out: they created a poetic,
free-flowing, typically flute and percussion-driven platform for
Scott-Heron’s AK-47 mouth to artistically and scathingly say that
America was a racist war-loving hypocritical slag heap, deluded by fake
movies, fake history, fake images and fake media.
Scott-Heron and the multi-instrumentalist Jackson fused and maxed out
beat poetry and music to what they always should have been, with
fabulous hypnotic grooves and the occasional tasty solo. Scott-Heron
ra-ta-tatted against injustice, but you kept on listening, for decades,
because the hooks and creativity are always present whether moving
through funk, soul, R&B, free jazz, African or Caribbean beats.
Drugs, violence, poverty, inequality, opportunistic “leaders” and
sellouts, addiction, defeat and lives that never got off the ground were
frequent subjects. But the really unforgivable sin was musical boredom.
In his prime, Scott-Heron shouted that the emperors were not only
stark naked but stark raving mad. He had empathy for people struggling
against addiction and poverty and whenever you have empathy -
artistically, personally, politically - it will lead you to a better
place. And this is another difference between Scott-Heron and many of
the rappers he is alleged to have inspired.
Empathy begat the anger. I dispute that most of the rappers I hear
are angry - if they were, they would be totally revulsed by Barack
Obama. How empathetic are Americans, in general, when they acquiesce to
the nonstop killing of innocents all over the world - they may think
they are angry or that their backs are against the wall but these are
largely the cries of the alienated, unconnected and passive, satisfied
as debt-slaves with iTrinkets and currently presided over by MC Obummer,
an astounding master of, as it turns out, killing hope.
I saw Scott-Heron perform three years ago at the Tin Angel in
Philadelphia. To see the creator of “Storm Music” and “The Bottle”
perform in an intimate club was a thrill. He had a voice and presence
that you paid attention to - his baritone was born to deliver
Shakespeare, as bassist Ron Carter once said.
He and his rockin’ pianist, blistering lefty lead player and the
smoking rhythm section were so relentlessly good that I didn’t even miss
my favorite song, “Storm Music,” or “The Revolution Will Not Be
Televised.” The new songs, from “I’m New Here,” were instantly embraced.
And “The Bottle” swung mightily that night. And he was hilarious, both
that night and on his recorded offhand pot shots against the ruling
class, something that isn’t often noted when he’s written about.
That Philly show fell in a time period, the fall of 2009, where I
also saw James McMurtry and Iris DeMent. Interestingly (maybe) is that
Scott-Heron did not perform “The Revolution Will Not be Televised,”
DeMent did not perform “Wasteland of the Free,” and McMurtry did not
play “We Can’t Make It Here,” all absolutely classic songs pointedly
critical of America.
I’m sure these artists had different reasons for not playing these
tunes but I took it as a bad omen. The impression it made on me was that
now that the Big Bad Bush was gone it was time to STFU about America.
It was time to start feeling good about America because an uncouth goon
from Texas was replaced by a smooth-talking intelligent Wall Street
stooge.
So, after two years of Obama, I
mused: the working class of America, especially blacks, can get as much
action on their concerns by sending a letter to whitey on the moon as
they can from having America’s first black president in the White House.
Protest and anger were uncool. Nothing as pseudo-glorious as Reagan’s
Morning (Thunder) in America but, rather, some weak-ass liberal
Sleepytime tea time in America. Scott-Heron had also spoken favorably
about Obama.
So, after two years of Obama, I mused: the working class of America,
especially blacks, can get as much action on their concerns by sending a
letter to whitey on the moon as they can from having America’s first
black president in the White House.
In the jumbled world of confusing musicians with leaders, I thought
about how Scott-Heron canceled a planned show in Israel in 2010 (why did
he ever schedule it?) - persuaded by activists that it would be similar
to playing in apartheid South Africa.
One might imagine that Scott-Heron would be helping to lead a BDS
movement instead of being confronted by it. But why should we expect
musicians and celebrities to be more unaffected by capitalism than 99.9%
of the rest of the population?
His embrace of Obama perfectly symbolizes the personal and political
decline and irrelevance of the left over the last 40 years. We didn’t
just come a short way, baby. We went headlong the wrong way. O working
class, we have to be constantly moving forward toward the overthrow of
capitalism because when we cease to advance we will either die
immediately or be lost for decades.
So I’m thinking of Gil Scott-Heron and his commendable activism
against the nuclear industry and apartheid South Africa, and the litmus
test of one’s humanity and commitment to justice, equality and the rule
of law, i.e., supporting the Palestinians against Israel, and how two
weeks ago [Ed: this article was written in 2011] I saw my first keyboard
hero, Ray Manzarek (of the Doors), at the Sellersville Theater, pleased
with his acid-tested spirituality, telling the crowd that Christians
and Muslims and Jews should put away their religious books and just love
each other and, by the way, he and Robby Krieger are looking forward to
playing as the Doors in Tel Aviv this summer because “the Israelis are
so cool.”
(Hey, Ray, how about you and Robby do something that truly breaks on
through: be on the next Free Gaza flotilla and play a Gaza concert if
and when you “break on through” the illegal Israeli blockade - maybe you
can see how “cool” the IDF is. Maybe you can grab Jim Morrison from out
of the ether, where you said he resides, and bring your interstellular
spirituality down to earth where it might mean something. It says in the
Uncool Book that faith without works is dead.)
Oh well, as a sometime Zionist, sometime Christian troubadour once
admonished us, “Don’t follow leaders and watch the parking meters.” He
never explained the parking meter thing though I assumed he was warning
us not to take up the drunken dares of friends to vault over the meters
after the bars close.
And I give Gil Scott-Heron almost the last word: “It ain’t no new thing - America is always the same old shit.”
Now, are those words from many years ago too negative and cynical,
too unhopey and unchangey? Well, decades after Gil Scott-Heron urged
people to send their unaffordable, unpaid “doctor bills to whitey on the
moon,” he lived to see 45 million Americans without any health
insurance and 47 million on food stamps. He railed against ghetto
poverty in 1970 and 41 years later lived to see the greatest
inequalities in wealth since the Great Depression. And he lived to see
the first black POTUS, a Nobel Peace Prize-winner who’s currently
slaughtering innocent dark-skinned people in five different countries.
America can’t make clothes, shoes, toys, electronics, peace or
justice but we make a hell of a lot of irony. Anyway… Gil Scott-Heron,
don’t rest in peace as everyone is advising you to, rage on wherever you
are, be witty and scathing, be the fighter you are, be bold when no one
else will, whether you’re in heaven or hell, I’m sure that things can
be better in both places.
Take with you into eternity the fiery ambitious man/child who wrote a
well-regarded novel, “The Vulture,” when you were only 19 years old.
Fuck crack, fuck Rikers, fuck HIV, fuck the blunting of capitalism on
your spirit, it happens, from time to time the darkness comes along to
terrorize the weak and challenge the strong, because you were a human
being, not a god, the storm is coming, it grows on the waves from
Johannesburg to Montego Bay, these were tiny blips on the road to making
a beautiful soul, none of us are who capitalism says we are, we have no
idea who we are or what we could be, but justice is coming on the wings
of a storm and we resist in the present for those yet unborn, what’s
that music (storm music) playin’ on the radio, what’s that music (storm
music) playin’ everywhere I go, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sweeter
feelin’ in the whole wide world than Gil Scott-Heron playing “Storm
Music” on the radio…
Note: Randy Shields can be reached at music2hi4thehumanear@gmail.com. Visit Randy’s website at innagoddadadamdavegan.blogspot. The above article was posted at CounterPunch and dissidentvoice.org.
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$ingaporeans
have never experienced a storm. Yet its roads are regularly flooded,
albeit for about an hour, when rainfall is heavy. These floods, called
ponding by the $ingapore government, have become regular affairs since
2010. Wikipedia has the details. We should look at New York City now to see what a “once-in-50-years” type flood really looks like.
