Saturday, May 27, 2023

Remembering Gil Scott Heron

Genius - Woke - Trailblazer - TIMELESS



GIL - SCOTT- HERON 

Often misunderstood, the brilliance of Gil Scott Heron, could NOT be denied. He was a radical conspiracy theorist. Leap years ahead of his time. Don’t believe me, just listen to ‘his songs like, ‘The Bottle’ ‘Johannesburg’, ‘B-Movie’, ‘The Revolution will Not Be Televised’ and my personal favorite ‘Home Is Where The Hatred Is’. 

Heron was very profound in his thoughts and political opinions. He knew of a Donald Trump like world 50 years ago đź‘€ 


His literary and artistic influences were many: Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Richie Havens, John Coltrane, Otis Redding, Jose Feliciano, Billie Holiday, Malcolm X, Huey Newton, and Nina Simone (to name a few).  His art encompassed blues forms and techniques (he called himself a “bluesologist”), the legacy of the Black Arts Movement (artistic representations calling on aesthetics more representative of the African-American experience, including, but not limited to, oral poetics, political and social consciousness foregrounded in the piece), as well as his targeted focus on American politics and racial history with a searing examination of popular culture as an expression of problems with class and race in America. His literary influence will be a lasting achievement; he is featured in both The Cambridge History of African-American Literature and The Norton Anthology of African-American Literature.  He's well represented in both anthologies, and scholars repeatedly examine his use of the blues, both structurally and thematically, as it is linked to his combining jazz rhthyms and tonal structures in his spoken-word art.


This Genius passed away May 27 - 2011

Rest In Peace

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