The scope and relevance of Scott-Heron's work is nearly unparalleled. There isn't much his music & poetry hasn't covered and their aren't many artists who haven't covered him.
Gil Scott-Heron:
The Revolution Has Been Sampled, Remixed and Televised
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is easily the best known of Gil Scott Heron’s compositions. Written and recorded just as the most militant energy of the Civil Rights and Black Power era seemed to be waning, the song was a sharp and prescient view of the commodities of struggle and resistance—the place where revolutionary acts give way to market forces and prime time ratings.
In 1970, Scott-Heron couldn’t have imagined 24-hour news programming like CNN, let alone Al Jazeera, though it is fitting that as the revolution is indeed being televised from Tahrir Square in Egypt, that he is as healthy and as relevant as he has been in nearly two decades.
To be sure, Gil Scott Heron has paid a price for his truth-telling and his willingness to make politically relevant music accessible to all that would have it. Perhaps we’ll never fully know if the drug-addiction and other dependencies that have so often derailed his vision was part of some COINTELPRO inspired conspiracy to deny our most gifted and passionate, access to the thing that matters the most—their right minds (surely cheaper and neater than assassination).
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21
Gil Scott-Heron:
The Revolution Has Been Sampled, Remixed and Televised
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21
“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” is easily the best known of Gil Scott Heron’s compositions. Written and recorded just as the most militant energy of the Civil Rights and Black Power era seemed to be waning, the song was a sharp and prescient view of the commodities of struggle and resistance—the place where revolutionary acts give way to market forces and prime time ratings.
In 1970, Scott-Heron couldn’t have imagined 24-hour news programming like CNN, let alone Al Jazeera, though it is fitting that as the revolution is indeed being televised from Tahrir Square in Egypt, that he is as healthy and as relevant as he has been in nearly two decades.
To be sure, Gil Scott Heron has paid a price for his truth-telling and his willingness to make politically relevant music accessible to all that would have it. Perhaps we’ll never fully know if the drug-addiction and other dependencies that have so often derailed his vision was part of some COINTELPRO inspired conspiracy to deny our most gifted and passionate, access to the thing that matters the most—their right minds (surely cheaper and neater than assassination).
Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21
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