A Quote by Will Hermes
Comeback records always worry me, especially when they're made by one of my heroes, and I'd heard stories about Gil Scott-Heron recently, about drug arrests and prison terms and other troubles. I wasn't prepared for the ravaged shakiness of his voice on this record or the raw spoken word pieces or the dark electronic backgrounds.
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I've always been a poet. My dad went to Lincoln University with Gil-Scott Heron, so I came out of the womb listening to Gil-Scott Heron.
America has not produced a more salient political musician than Gil Scott-Heron.
If you listen to 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,' by Gil Scott-Heron, that album is dripping with rage.
Whether the issue was black political power or nuclear power, Scott-Heron didn't mince words. His comeback record, "I'm New Here," doesn't mince words either, but instead of political battles, these songs suggest he's fighting personal ones.
When I discovered Gil Scott-Heron, I discovered a musical hero, a man who spoke baritone truth to power over jazzy funk at a time when funky music was primarily about shake, shake, shaking your booty.
I think Gil Scott-Heron is a king. He's a brilliant, broken king.
I've always been passionate about human rights in general. I think anyone who knows me can attest to that. I really wasn't given a voice until very recently, but I've always spoken out about the bullshit that's going on since the beginning of having a platform.
I think something that is never really spoken about is the learning process of making records - I made my first record at twenty one and learned so much about record making from that before making 'Bomb In A Birdcage' a couple of years later.
Growing up, cancer was one of those things that I heard other people talk about. The word scared me, but I always thought, 'Thank goodness I don't have to worry about that.' Then, in 1998, I lost my father to cancer.
I found poetry at 12 and 13 and, lo and behold, learned that my attorney father had a background in poetry - as he wore dashikis and Afros in the '70s and named his kids Arabic names. He was a poet and a lot like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and all of these folks. He definitely was an artist.
I am in the lineage of Gil Scott-Heron, great activist-type artists. But I'm also in the lineage of a Miles Davis - you know, that liked nice things also.
I'd once been fascinated by his legend - all the stories I'd heard before I met him. Now I can feel that same sense of fascination returning. I picture his face, so beautiful even after pain and torture and grief, his blue eyes bright and sincere. I'm ashamed to admit that I enjoyed my brief time with him in his prison cell. His voice can make me forget about all the details running through my mind, bringing with it emotions of desire, or fear instead, sometimes even anger, but always triggering something. Something that wasn't there before.
All my big heroes are literary, writers. I'd love to meet Jimmy Hendrix or John Coltrane, but I'd much rather meet Thomas Wolfe, or F. Scott Fitzgerald. Words and books have always meant a lot to me. That someone can take words and string them together to where they will move me is just a hell of a thing. It's amazing to me; more amazing to me than music or painting. It's always been the written word or the spoken word, like a great lecture or a great lyric, or a great poem. To me it's just amazing. And I always aspire toward capturing that, or my version of it.
I think comparisons are very on the surface. If I sing, like, 'Park Bench People,' and there's kind of a social undertone, people will say I sound like Gil Scott-Heron. But for me, the more insightful comparison would be a Roberta Flack or Nina Simone - people who really mix different genres of music.
Cartola is an artist from Brazil who didn't record until much later in his life, but had a big influence on a lot of famous artists down there, like Gilberto Gil. I discovered his music recently when I was in Brazil.
No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded.
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