Gil Scott-Heron: His name says it all. The man made history, an activist artist of singular consequence.
Sly vocals, wry lyrics set to sweet music on electric piano forged a strong statement of Black autonomy.
Hailing from Chicago, long popular on the Washington, D.C.-Baltimore scene, this dyed-in-the-wool original was part and parcel of the impromptu, early-1970s explosion in Brooklyn, N.Y. that birthed The Last Poets, Richie Havens and Scott-Heron’s crowning achievement with flautist Brian Jackson, Winter in America.
He would reach a formidable height with his anthemic clarion call summoning Black consciousness, “Johannesburg.” Winter in America, though, put Gil Scott-Heron on the map, featuring “The Bottle,” a wizened, no-holdsbarred account of addiction and its destruction of communities. Who among us can’t feel that bittersweet cut, moved by its sinewy groove. Who of us don’t relate to verses on the order of, “see that sister, sho’ was fine/’fore she started drinkin’ wine from the bottle/she told me/her old man committed a crime, he’s doin’ time/now, she’s hangin’in a bottle/i seen her/outthere on the avenue/all by herself, sure need help from the bottle/i seen a preacher man/tried to help her out/ she cussed him out, and hit him in the head/with a bottle.”
Scott-Heron wasn’t above telling on himself, ending with, “if you ever come lookin’ f’ me/you know where i’m bound to be/in the bottle/turn around/look around on any corner, if you see some brotha lookin’ like a gonna/it’s gonna be me.” The poignant, killer refrain haunts: “don’t you think it’s a crime/time after time, people in the bottle/people sho’ nuff in the bottle.”
Gil Scott-Heron, master poet, singer and musician, was, along with The Last Poets, seminal, pioneering an art form eventually bastardized into the rhetorical formula of hip hop. You’ll find legitimate heirs to the legacy here and there. For instance, Chicago’s famed Poetree, not to mention Twin Cities firebrands Truth Maze and Toki Wright, came out of the true old school. Artists who don’t glamorize bein’ a gangsta or subscribe to the woman-asho sensibility. Artists who are about empowering the people.
In the 1980s, Scott-Heron commented on apartheid, releasing, along with “Johannesberg,”“Let Me See Your I.D.” He took on Reaganomics with “B-Movie” and protested nuclear power with “We Almost Lost Detroit.” There also was, it can’t go without noting, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” 2010, after a 13-year hiatus, saw the release of his last studio album, I’m New Here.
The gifted artist never hit the official big time. Didn’t top industry charts. Still, we knew he was there, raising hell, kicking ass and taking names to pull America’s coat to Black life.
Gil Scott-Heron also was a book author. In addition to a lengthy discography, he’s survived in print by The Vulture, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, The N***er Factory, So Far, So Good, Then: The Poems of Gil Scott-Heron and 2003’s unpublished The Last Holiday — which, with his passing, will surely make it to market.
Gil Scott-Heron is survived by his ex-wife, actormodel Brenda Sykes, anddaughter, Gia Louise Mitsuko Scott-Heron.
There will, as the saying goes, never be another. Not like this one. Gil Scott-Heronleft an indelible mark on American music and on society.
Dwight Hobbes welcomes reader responses to dhobbes@spokes man-recorder.com.