Gil Scott-Heron

I went to see Gil Scott-Heron with Talib Kweli on Friday night in downtown Brooklyn as part of the Black Writers' Convention that was taking place this weekend. It was an incredible experience. One that I want to write more about soon in fact, but in the mean time I thought I'd post something that I wrote about Gil about a month back, having just listened to 'I'm New Here' for the first time. I hope you all enjoy my strange rambling tangents in this piece.

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At some points in musical history, special attention must be paid, and this is one of those times. The release of Gil Scott-Heron’s first album in 15 years heralds a return to some sense of the genuine which seems to have been lost in these shiftless times of horror stories and vacuous, paper thin excuses for recording artists that will do what they are told and force feed you sludge until it spills out of your mouth in a stream of putrid, broken crotchets and quavers, indistinguishable from each other in a droning mess.

‘I’m New Here’, well aren’t we all? After the circle turns so far don’t we all feel new again when someone reawakens us with songs to agitate the soul. Gil’s heart has started to beat again in our breasts and he is calling his soldiers to war and the revolution we bring will not be televised, the revolution will NOT be televised. Broken up through the decades but never truly destroyed, the strength of Gil was forged from what he was given by those the state call broken though he was not from a ‘broken’ home. Bitter sweet smells of the streets and the South emanate from the strings and the bars on which hang the delicate protraction of notes tugging at the cat guts from inside us, used to be plucked and create our screams.

We are ready for our commands that come from the first. Of unfolding gently, with pride and respect, the covers of the box like the body of a lover, parting their legs,

"There is a proper procedure for taking advantage of any investment.
Music, for example. Buying a CD is an investment.
To get the maximum you must

LISTEN TO IT FOR THE FIRST TIME UNDER OPTIMUM CONDITIONS."

Yes sir. Would you ignore orders from such a man, such a man.

There is a travel in his words that transports us further than a bus, train, plane, automobile ever could. Far beyond the realms of our imagination and the stars whom, after all, are nothing more than burning clouds of gas and rock and one day will die just as all of us will, and one day so will Gil. As he reminds us on this album, that is why parents give birth, give life to follow their lives with some semblance of themselves and educate you with the ideas they feel fit to be carried forth unto your world.

Soul claps enunciate the power of running down the street towards the trouble. Trouble you know is there but draws you further in to their mesmerizing swirls of pain like a magnet draws that metal home even when it sure as hell doesn’t want to go from its own world of contentment. This is the power of words. This is the power of Gil Scott-Heron, and don’t you ever forget it.