GIL SCOTT-HERON

In Conversation With...
Gil Scott-Heron, Poet, Musician, Author

“You see, revolution sounds like something that happens, like turning on the light switch but actually it’s moving a large obstacle, and a lot of folks’ efforts to push it in one direction or the other have to combine.” 

On May 27, 2011, Culture lost one of its greatest influencers. We lost one of the greatest voices of inspired thought leadership. This week as we think on independence and the freedoms it brings, the realities of current are ever present, and in the midst of all, it is his voice in spoken-word colored with backings of jazz, blues, and deep house that are ever present. Gil Scott-Heron, the artist-activist, over the course of four decades gave expression to a collective experience of societal injustice against Black and Brown people in the USA. Freedom is seldom free, this we know, so as we reflect on this Independence weekend let’s remember two of his works, THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED and JOSE CAMPOS TORRES, are as timely today as when they were originally penned. 

He WAS

The Godfather of Rap  

The voice of a people 

A man, flawed and perfectly imperfect

His INSPIRATION 

“Most people who evaluate America and Africa, and what you need to do to change it would say that these men where the ones to do it.” Scott-Heron speaking about his alma mater LINCOLN UNIVERSITY (Pennsylvania), and his decision to enroll there because of the lineage:  

Langston Hughes 

Thurgood Marshall 

Kwame Nkrumah 

Melvin Tolsen

He INFLUENCED 

Kanye West 

Common 

Mos Def 

KRS-ONE 

Chuck D 

Dr. Dre 

Aesop Rock

His READS 

During his collegiate years, Scott-Heron put his formal studies on hold to write: 

The Vulture  

The Nigger Factory 

His PROSE

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED (1970) 
Gil Scott-Heron | Small Talk at 125th and Lenox | lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

You will not be able to stay home, brother
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and drop out
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip
Skip out for beer 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 interruption
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 be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre and
will not star Natalie Wood 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 Mays
Pushing that cart down the block on the dead run
Or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance
NBC will not predict the winner at 8:32or the count 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 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 right 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 whitetornado, white lightning, or white people
You will not have to worry about a germ on 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 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 

The revolution will be no re-run brothers
The revolution will be live

The revolution will be no re-run brothers
The revolution will be live

Jose Campos Torres (poem on Police Brutality) 
Gil Scott-Heron | lyrics The Mind of Gil Scott-Heron (1978) | Arista and TVT Records

Gil Scott-Heron Performance of Jose Campos Torres on "Ossie and Ruby" 

In 1977, Jose Campos Torres, a 23-year-old Vietnam veteran was beaten to death by White Houston police officers. Found guilty for their crime they were sentenced to 1-year probation and $1. The public outcry that ensued inspired Scott-Heron’s tribute.  

I had said I wasn't going to write no more poems like this
I had confessed to myself all along, tracer of life, poetry trends
That awareness, consciousness, poems that screamed of pain and the origins of pain and death had blanketed my tablets
And therefore, my friends, brothers, sisters, in-laws, outlaws, and besides -- they already knew  

But brother Torres, common ancient bloodline brother Torres is dead 

I had said I wasn't going to write no more poems like this
I had said I wasn't going to write no more words down about people kicking us when we're down
About racist dogs that attack us and drive us down, drag us down and beat us down 

But the dogs are in the street
The dogs are alive and the terror in our hearts has scarcely diminished 

It has scarcely brought us the comfort we suspected
The recognition of our terror and the screaming release of that recognition 

Has not removed the certainty of that knowledge -- how could it
The dogs rabid foaming with the energy of their brutish ignorance
Stride the city streets like robot gunslingers 

And spread death as night lamps flash crude reflections from gun butts and police shields 

I had said I wasn't going to write no more poems like this
But the battlefield has oozed away from the stilted debates of semantics 

Beyond the questionable flexibility of primal screaming
The reality of our city, jungle streets and their Gestapos
Has become an attack on home, life, family and philosophy, total
It is beyond the question of the advantages of didactic niggerisms
The motherfucking dogs are in the street

In Houston maybe someone said Mexicans were the new niggers
In LA maybe someone said Chicanos were the new niggers
In Frisco maybe someone said Orientals were the new niggers

Maybe in Philadelphia and North Carolina they decided they didn't need no new niggers
I had said I wasn't going to write no more poems like this
But dogs are in the street
 
It's a turn around world where things are all too quickly turned around
It was turned around so that right looked wrong
It was turned around so that up looked down
It was turned around so that those who marched in the streets with bibles and signs of peace became enemies of the state and risk to national security
 
So that those who questioned the operations of those in authority on the principles of justice, liberty, and equality became the vanguard of a communist attack
 
It became so you couldn't call a spade a motherfucking spade
Brother Torres is dead, the Wilmington Ten are still incarcerated
Ed Davis, Ronald Regan, James Hunt, and Frank Rizzo are still alive
And the dogs are in the motherfucking street
I had said I wasn't going to write no more poems like this
I made a mistake

See more rare performances by Gil Scott-Herron on "Ossie and Ruby