CDs by Gil-Scott Heron

From South Africa To South Carolina (1976)  Winter In America (1974)  / Pieces Of A Man (1971) / The First Minute Of A New Day

The Mind Of Gil Scott-Heron  /  Moving Target

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Books by Gil-Scott Heron

 The Vulture and The Nigger Factory / Small Talk At 125th And Lenox  / So Far. So Good  / Now and Then

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Gil Scott-Heron, Spoken-Word Musician, Dies at 62—By The Associated Press—May 27, 2011—Musician Gil Scott-Heron, who helped lay the groundwork for rap by fusing minimalistic percussion, political expression and spoken-word poetry on songs such as "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," died Friday at age 62. A friend, Doris C. Nolan, who answered the telephone listed for his Manhattan recording company, said he died in the afternoon at St. Luke's Hospital after becoming sick upon returning from a European trip.  "We're all sort of shattered," she said. Scott-Heron's influence on rap was such that he sometimes was referred to as the Godfather of Rap, a title he rejected.

"If there was any individual initiative that I was responsible for it might have been that there was music in certain poems of mine, with complete progression and repeating 'hooks,' which made them more like songs than just recitations with percussion," he wrote in the introduction to his 1990 collection of poems, "Now and Then." He referred to his signature mix of percussion, politics and performed poetry as bluesology or Third World music. But then he said it was simply "black music or black American music." "Because Black Americans are now a tremendously diverse essence of all the places we've come from and the music and rhythms we brought with us," he wrote. . . .

Scott-Heron recorded the song that would make him famous, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," which critiqued mass media, for the album 125th and Lenox in Harlem in the 1970s. He followed up that recording with more than a dozen albums, initially collaborating with musician Brian Jackson. His most recent album was "I'm New Here," which he began recording in 2007 and was released in 2010. Throughout his musical career, he took on political issues of his time, including apartheid in South Africa and nuclear arms. He had been shaped by the politics of the 1960s and the black literature, especially of the Harlem Renaissance.

Scott-Heron was born in Chicago on April 1, 1949. He was raised in Jackson, Tenn., and in New York before attending college at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Before turning to music, he was a novelist, at age 19, with the publication of The Vulture, a murder mystery.He also was the author of The Nigger Factory, a social satire.—NYTimes

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Gil Scott-Heron was the bridge between The Black Arts Movement and Hip Hop. Surely we are from Allah and to Him we return.—Marvin X

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Gil Scott-Heron dies aged 62—Poet and songwriter was hailed as 'Godfather of Rap' after penning "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"—David Sharrock

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Gil Scott's Role in an Untelevised Revolution

By Howard Rambsy

With the passing of Gil Scott-Heron [1949-2011], we're certain to hear about his wonderful career as a poet and musician over the coming days, weeks . . . years. As we should.  But there's another story that relates to "Scotty," as his childhood friends in Jackson, Tennessee, where he was raised, used to call him.  On January 25, 1962, Gil Scott-Heron and two other students were sent by their guardians to Tigrett Junior High School, effectively desegregating the school, and later by extension the school system.  I know what you're asking. Hadn't the Supreme Court declared in that 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education that it was unconstitutional to segregate public schools? Yep, but listen: some of these Southern towns don't care about your fancy laws and equality and constitution.

I heard about Scotty as one of those three students who helped desegregate the schools before I became aware of his talents and many contributions as a poet and musician. Well, in a way, I heard about his very early years as a musician because he took piano lessons with my aunt when adolescent growing up in Jackson. The schools in Jackson, where I was raised, did not officially become desegregated until the early 1990s. I was just starting high school at the time.  It was in the 1962, after Gil Scott-Heron and others went to Tigrett, that got black folks unofficially attending more than just the black schools.  

When the older folks who really helped change the system reflected on things at the time of official desegregation in the early 1990s, they'd mention this guy Scotty, along with his classmates such as Brenda Moses and Madeline Walker who were the first black students to go to the white schools. I've been switching back and forth saying Gil Scott-Heron and Scotty, as I spoke with my aunt early today about him. She, like all his other friends in Jackson, only knew him as Scotty.  In 1963, Lille Scott, his grandmother died, and so Scotty left Jackson and moved to New York City with his mother. Scotty was then on the road to becoming "the" Gil Scott-Heron. 

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Source: SIUEB

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Gil Scott-Heron "Blue Collar"

Breath of Life Music Commentary by Mtume ya Salaam & Kalamu ya Salaam

I’m a Teamster and proud of it. Before I became one though, I can’t say I knew for sure what that meant. What it means is, I belong to one of the largest labor unions in America—specifically, the one that includes truck drivers and dock workers. Originally, ‘teamsters’ were mule-cart drivers or something like that, so that’s the where the name came from.

The other day on the radio, I heard an economist assert in an op-ed that the reason unions are losing power and membership in America is because they are no longer needed. The middle class in America is strong, he said, standards of living have never been higher, and therefore, unions have become redundant. Unions exist so that blue-collar individuals can earn a good living wage, health care and a pension. Since all of those things are already being taken care of by the free market system, he asked, why do we still need unions at all? To hear him tell it, the squeeze on unions is a problem providing its own solution. Union enrollment is down because the problem unions are supposed to correct is no longer much of a problem.

On the surface level, the argument sounds good. But dig a little deeper and it reveals itself to be specious at best. Using the same line of reasoning, I guess we can conclude that the nationwide nursing shortage is because there aren’t enough sick people and the decline in enrollment at police academies across the country is because there just isn’t enough crime to go around. It makes about as much sense.

I don’t know what fantasy land the op-ed guy resides in, but in the real world where I live, health care costs for the average worker are going through the roof, virtually no one has a pension to look forward to and wages are getting stretched thinner and thinner. I need to look no further than non-union trucking companies to see this reality. At my last trucking job – which was non-unionized – health care cost me $90 per week (vs. $0 per week now), my only option for retirement was a partially-funded 401k (as opposed to a fully-funded pension) and I got paid almost eight dollars per hour less than I get paid now. And that was actually a pretty good company. The job I had before that one was such a fucked up experience I don’t even want to describe it now for fear of waking up. I might still be stuck in that hellhole and only dreaming that I’m typing this. The point is, without the union, my working life would suck.

In arguing against unions, the op-ed guy reported that Americans, as a whole, have never been wealthier. He also reported that household income among middle-class Americans is higher now than it has ever been, even adjusted for inflation. All of that is true. What he didn’t say was that nearly all middle-class families earn that extra money by having both Mom and Dad working full-time. What he forgot to mention was in the last forty years the top 20% in America have seen a nearly 100% gain in their annual income while the rest of us have seen about a 20% or so gain…and that’s with both parents working! If you’re older than thirty, ask yourself, did your Mom work outside of the house? Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. Now ask, did your grandmother work outside of the house? I’ll bet the majority didn’t.

Now ask yourself this question. If you’re a woman – do you work full-time? If you’re a man – does your girlfriend or wife work full-time? I’ll bet they do. If you factor in the additional worker in most households, I’d argue that middle-class and working-class incomes have gone DOWN in the last forty years. Not up at all. Meanwhile, I deliver imported Italian tile and bamboo flooring and flat-screen televisions to the top 20% all day everyday and I can report with confidence that not many of the Moms in La Jolla or Del Mar or Rancho Santa Fe are out working 40+ hours per week unless they’re doing so by choice. And good for them. I wish every mother could make that choice if she wanted to.

Now, on to the music, shall we? Gil Scott-Heron is known as a Black revolutionary, a poet who fought fiercely for the rights of Black people in America and around the world. What few know about Gil is he also consistently fought for the working class of all races. Over and over, Gil sang about and talked about the plight of the ordinary working man and woman. When he did, race would scarcely, if ever, be mentioned. Part of Gil’s brilliance was he recognized a long, long time ago that race was just one part of the system of oppression in America. Here, in America, class warfare is the real deal. If racism is a symptom, classism is the illness itself.

Gil Scott-Heron may have started out in 1971 as an angry young revolutionary, spouting racially-charged polemics, but my man was also twenty-two years old at the time. Ten year later, when Gil cut “Blue Collar” (from the Moving Target LP), he was older, wiser and in tone at least, quieter. He realized that the battle for equality wasn’t just in the urban centers where most of the black and Latino folk are, but also “between the cities and the towns,” where you’ll find mostly working-class white folk, many of whom are dealing with the same or similar economic pressures as working class black people deal with in Chicago or L.A. or NYC. “You can’t name where I ain’t been down,” Gil sings, “’Cause there ain’t nowhere I ain’t been done.”

A couple years earlier, Gil cut a track named “Three Miles Down” (from the out-of-print LP Secrets) in which he focused on coal miners, not exactly the first profession that comes to mind when one thinks of black people. Gil likens working in a coal mine to “working in a graveyard.” Except in this case, you’re actually working in the graveyard because “there ain’t no sunshine underground.” Since 1978 when Gil first recorded “Three Miles Down,” the song has become one of his most-performed live numbers. We’ll include both the original (which is more affecting) and the live version (which is a lot longer and, as unlikely as it may seem, very funny. BTW, the live version is from a set named Tales Of Gil Scott-Heron. It’s out-of-print as well.)

We’ve got something of a blues theme going, so let’s go to a spoken-word piece in which Gil breaks down the meaning of the blues. The poem “H20 Gate Blues” is an example of Gil’s always-brilliant political commentary (it’s available on The Mind Of Gil Scott-Heron). I remember hearing this piece back when I was 10 or 11 years old. I used to play it over and over, having not even the slightest idea what Gil was talking about but being totally captivated by the sound of his voice. His confidence, his dexterity, his timing – it’s a beautiful thing even if you can’t understand the words. And again, you’ll hear how Gil uses his breakdown of the aftermath of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal to talk about the class system in America and around the world. 

Let’s go back to 1971. Pieces Of A Man was Gil’s first foray into full-out song-writing and singing. (He’d previously released Small Talk At 125th & Lenox which was a collection of poetry set to drumming, Last Poets style.) The cut I want to mention from this album is “Save The Children.” There’s one couplet in particular that stands out:

Little Tommy and little Mary want to be a fireman and a school teacher? What a cliché, right? Yes, and I think intentionally so. Even in 1971, even right on top of the Black Power era, I believe Gil was already singing about class inequality. When he said “we’ve got to do something to save the children,” I don’t think he meant we have to save them from death or prison or anything of the sort. I think he meant we need to save them from things like shrinking wages, virtually non-existent health care and empty pension accounts. He meant, ordinary people deserve good lives too. That’s the reason, I think, that he chose “typical American” names like Tommy and Mary and that’s the reason he chose such obvious middle-class jobs as fireman and school teacher. He was saying, we have to save the ordinary dreams of ordinary people because we are the ordinary people. As I look around at the outsourcing of American jobs, the ever-increasing number of workers without health care and the almost-daily news of corporate buy outs, mergers and lay-offs, I’m not so sure that we’ve followed Gil’s advice.—Mtume ya Salaam

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The Great Goodness of Gil’s Music           

Gil represents the best of conscious black artists. And, ironically, the worst. His work is sterling. Being a junkie is shit. His will to create must be off the charts. How else could he produce even as he is a dope fiend, i.e. someone for whom there are but two dominant realities: 1. Being high and 2. Getting high.

But beyond working through his problems of substance abuse, and beyond the general high quality of his artistic work there is an important element that separates Gil from other conscious songwriters, performers and spoken word artists. Gil Scott has a sharply defined and brilliantly articulated working class consciousness. He knows the real basis of the differences and problems within contemporary American society is rooted in class warfare. Gil is clear about that war and is unstinting in boldly and cogently addressing class struggle, a struggle which most of us don’t think about, not to mention include as a focal point of our artwork. 

Beyond the great goodness of the music and the beauty of his delivery, I am convinced that people around the world respond to Gil addressing the concerns of people whom society forces to work (and work hard) just to eek out a meager living. Throwing the spotlight on class struggle not only appeals to the majority of people in today’s world, a working class focus also appeals across generational lines.

I’m adding “Alien” and “This Is A Prayer For Everybody” to the jukebox and I’m also including a live version of “Save The Children.” “Alien” is an old song first recorded in 1979 and released on the now-out-of-print album called 1980. Dig, over thirty years ago Gil Scott-Heron was addressing the plight of Hispanic aliens. How’s that for social insight and prophesy in terms of what issues were going to increase in relevancy?

The first version is the original 1980 version and the second is a 1994 live recording featuring Ron Holloway on saxophone and Gil introducing the song in Spanish.

“This Is A Prayer For Everybody” is one of my favorite recordings. The movement of the chord choices give off an aura of optimism. The rolling rhythm puts the listener in a relaxed mood. The tenor solo at the end is lyrical and simultaneously jazzy. I used to play this song to end my three hour Sunday morning radio programs.

In terms of the lyrics, this is one of the most positive songs ever written but it is a clear-eyed positivity that recognizes there is a lot of wrong but emphatically states that together we can overcome. Or, as Gil says: “We must be strong and not become bitter.”

Which, coming back to Gil’s personal travails with drug addiction, Gil exemplifies. Regardless of the depth of his problems, he continues to push forward and has not become bitter. The absence of bitterness is beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

Gil Scott-Heron is an amazing man—a brilliant songwriter yes but also an amazing individual who continues strong in the struggle despite his obvious personal contradictions. Viva la revolucion! Viva Gil Scott-Heron!—Kalamu ya Salaam

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Father of hip-hop, Gil Scott-Heron is a survivor—Jonathan Takiff Philadelphia Daily News—In the late 1960s and '70s, there were none hipper or signifying more on the conscious black arts scene than Gil Scott-Heron. The Lincoln University- and Johns Hopkins-educated poet, author and English professor also discovered his voice as a dramatically throaty, impassioned jazz- and blues-tinged singer. Though he has just released the long-overdue album I'm New Here, he was nurturing a modern neo-soul sound long before the style had a name. And if you ask any of the world's most relevant rappers — from Chuck D to Common — who inspired them, odds are good they'll cite this guy.

In fact, Scott-Heron is still living down his rep as “the father of hip-hop,” cited for predicting (first to a bongo beat and later with a jazz combo) that "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." He also put a harsh spotlight on South African apartheid in the bluesy holler "What's the Word? Johannesburg," pondered the social cost of putting "Whitey on the Moon" and characterized the presidency of former actor Ronald Reagan as just another B Movie. So what does Scott-Heron think of all he's wrought? “My kids like hip-hop, and I like my kids,” he said diplomatically. “That's who they're ready for. I'm not supposed to like it. They're not doing it for me.” HoustonChronicle

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Gil Scott-Heron is back—and as challenging as ever—By Patrick Neate—When I suggest to Scott-Heron that his work has been a victim of his convictions, he responds with enthusiasm: “Did we make people feel uncomfortable? Maybe we did, but that’s for them to judge. Like I say, we’ve been heard of more than we been heard. So, if they felt uncomfortable, at least that would mean they heard it. . . .

“As far as I’m concerned, what we were doing was necessary. When we released Johannesburg, people didn’t want to talk about South Africa; so we were taking a chance. I felt somebody’s got to bring it up, but I didn’t necessarily intend it to be me. I would have rather it was congressmen or those intended to talk about these things, but they wouldn’t. But if my children were to ask me what I’d said, I wanted to have an answer. Nowadays, there are more artists prepared to address these issues and that makes it harder to control. But then they could control it simply by removing my stuff from the shelves. And they did. Now they’d have to take out half the f***ing store.” He laughs heartily. TimesOnline

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New York Is Killing Me

Excerpts by Alec Wilkinson

9 August 2010

Scott-Heron’s parents separated when he was two years old, and while his mother went to Puerto Rico to teach English he lived with his grandmother in Jackson. “My grandmother was dead serious,” he said one day, sitting on his couch. “Her sense of humor was a secret. She started me playing the piano. There was a funeral parlor next door to our house, and they had this old piano that they used for wakes and funerals, and they were getting ready to take it to the junk yard. She wanted me to play hymns for the ladies’ sewing circle that met every Thursday, and she bought the piano for six dollars, and she paid a lady up the street five or ten cents a lesson to teach me to play four hymns, ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus,’ ‘Rock of Ages,’ ‘The Old Rugged Cross,’ and I can’t think of the other one. I was eight years old, and I had started to listen to WDIA in Memphis, and they would play the blues. When I was practicing, I would have to mix them, because my grandmother was not big on the blues. When she was out in the yard, I can play what I want, but if she’s in the house I got to mix John Lee Hooker with ‘Rock of Ages.’ ”

The phone rang, but he ignored it. “I found my grandmother dead,” he went on. “It shook me up. I got up to make her breakfast, and I knew it was strange that she wasn’t stirring. I went in to wake her, and she was laying in rigor mortis”—he leaned back and held his legs and arms stiff—“and I’m done. I called next door, and the kid picked up the phone, and I was so wild, he dropped it. I went outside and saw the woman from the house going to work, and she came and took over. I was twelve.”  

With his mother and her brother, Scott-Heron moved to an apartment in the Bronx, and his mother went to work for the city housing authority. Before long, his uncle moved out, and his mother couldn’t afford the rent, so she put her name on a list for an apartment in a project in Chelsea, in Manhattan. “Black people didn’t want to live in Chelsea, but we just wanted to go somewhere,” Scott-Heron said. “We started in ’65. It was eighty-five per cent Puerto Rican, fifteen per cent white, and me.”  . . .

Scott-Heron was one of five black students among a class of a hundred, and in his second year he got in trouble for playing the piano. “They had a beautiful Steinway they used for the choir and the chorus, but I got caught using it to play the Temptations,” he said. “A guy came in and screamed at me to stop, and they put a sign up saying ‘Do Not Play.’ A few days later, he came in, and I’m sitting under the sign playing the piano. So they told me they were going to call my mother, and I laughed—not because I was being disrespectful, although he took it that way—but because I thought, You really don’t want to get my mother into this.

But they called her and told her to come to a disciplinary meeting, and the evening before she asked me what had happened, and I told her. And she said, ‘Well, did you hit the man?,’ and I said, ‘No, I was playing the piano.’ I tried to explain that there had been no rule against it until I did it. A lot of kids had been going up there to play ‘Chopsticks,’ I said, and she asked me again, did I hit him. She had reached the conclusion that I had done something so awful that I didn’t want to describe it, because she couldn’t imagine that they had called her up there to tell her I had been playing the piano.”

The meeting took place around a horseshoe-shaped table. “My mother listened to them, and when they were finished she said, ‘You all know where we live, and the difficulties of our life, so I’m not going to talk about that. We got burglaries, assaults, muggings—it’s not the best place to raise a child—but whenever something happens down there that might involve my son, I don’t call you. I figure that’s my area, and this is yours. Now, I have read your discipline handbook, and what I suggest you do is expel him, because it’s this way or that, near as I can tell, so what I’m going to do right now, since this is your area, I’m going to leave and go to work, because if I don’t get there soon, they’re going to take half my day’s wages from me, and when I get home this evening he’ll tell me what you decided, but, if you’re asking my opinion, you have to expel him. We have really enjoyed it here, and it has added to my son’s life, and I think we’ve added to your ethical-culture thing, but I’m going to go now, and you’ll excuse my son because he’s got to walk me to the subway. Thank you all very much.’ She got up and put on her coat, and I took a hard look at the man who had started all this, to say, ‘See, I told you you didn’t want to get my mama involved.’

“She walked to the subway in a stone silence. All she said was ‘I want you to leave these people’s piano alone. You’re not here to play the piano.’ I said, ‘What if they expel me?’ ‘Then you won’t have to worry about it; you’ll be someplace else. You leave these people’s stuff alone, and when you tell me something from now on I’ll believe you.’ ”  Scott-Heron was made to stay after school three Wednesdays in a row to wash out the brushes in the art room. A classmate, Roderick Harrison, says that he remembers two things about Scott-Heron. “He could hold a classroom or a hallway in thrall” is one of them. The other recollection is of his mother. “She was,” he told me, “imposing.” —NewYorker

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The Vulture and The Nigger Factory is an omnibus edition of the two highly successful novels from the early 1970s by one of America's most outspoken and important postwar commentators on race, politics, and culture Scott-Heron's highly successful two novels are now packaged together for the first time. The Vulture—first published in 1970 and digging the rhythms of the street, where the biggest deal life has to offer is getting high, The Vulture  is a hip and fast-moving thriller. It relates the strange story of the murder of a teenage boy called John Lee—telling it in the words of four men who knew him when he was just another kid working after school, hanging out, waiting for something to happen. Just who did kill John Lee and why? ‘Here lies a man with a kind heart and a good will.’ . . . All the nice comments that were whispered about you . . . were as worthless as the air that transported them from mouth to ear.

The Vulture  relates the strange story of John Lee’s murder—telling it in the words of four men who knew him when he was just another kid working after school, hanging out, waiting for something to happen. Just who did kill John Lee and why? A hip and fast-moving thriller.

The Nigger Factory is a biting satire set on the campus of Sutton University, Virginia. The failure of Sutton to embrace the changing attitudes of the sixties has necessitated has caused disaffection among the black students and revolution is nigh.

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Gil Scott-Heron on You-Tube

Me And The Devil  /  Winter in America  / We Beg Your Pardon  / Message to the Messengers  / Johannesburg  / The Bottle  / Is That Jazz?  / Ain't No Such Thing As A Superman

I'm New Here  / Me and the Devil  /  New York Is Killing Me  /  I'll Take Care of You  / The Revolution Will Not Be Televised  / Jose Campos Torres

Gil Scott Heron Godfather of Rap 1 of 6 /  Gil Scott Heron Godfather of Rap 2 of 6  / Gil Scott Heron Godfather of Rap 3 of 6 

 Gil Scott Heron Godfather of Rap 4 of 6 /  Gil Scott Heron Godfather of Rap 5 of 6  / Gil Scott Heron Godfather of Rap 6 of 6

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[Gil Scott-Heron] was a great poet, a giant of the spoken word, and Gil Scott Heron spoke about politics as it was.  He challenged the corrupt nature of the Nixon Administration, and the fact that Ford had pardoned Nixon.  When I was a young man growin' up in South Carolina, Gil Scott Heron sang about nuclear weapons that were being built in South Carolina, nuclear radiological waste that was being stored in South Carolina.  He sang about the connection between South Carolina and South Africa.  Gil Scott Heron spoke truth to power, and was probably one of the last contemporary artists whose words challenged the empire that is America.  And you don't have any writers or any poets or any musicians that can parallel his work on the contemporary scene. To say he's the father of modern hip hop, of modern rap is to say that they have words in common with him, but surely the message doesn't even compare to his body of work and the teaching, the radical progressivism that he represented throughout his life, no one can match that. . . .  

His body of work is just so large.  I mean everyone remembers "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," but a lotta people don't remember "H20GATE, Watergate Blues," in which he sang about Richard Nixon and Watergate, or, when Gerald Ford gave Nixon a pardon, "We Beg Your Pardon, America," or "Whitey on the Moon": "Rat bit my sister today, but Whitey's on the moon."   That's an awesome song.  His body of work is just so huge that y'know one thing about his passing that has been kind of a mixed blessing is that people have gone back to listen to all the work that he produced in his life.—Kevin Alexander Gray  / AnnGarrison

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Gil Scott-Heron was more than the 'Godfather of Rap'

Excerpts by Earl Ofari Hutchinson

 

29 May 2011

The irony is that Heron took great pains to distance himself from many of the rap artists that purportedly were influenced by him. He decried their resort to shock, demeaning, and degrading lyrics and words, and their lust for the bling and opulence, at the expense of socially grounded and edgy lyrics that blasted oppression and injustice.

Heron 's true importance and legacy was that he was the textbook liberated spirit, a musical social and political griot who refused to compromise or tone down his scathing political attacks on the establishment. Heron didn't just hector, pick at and tweak the establishment to protest racism and the struggles against injustice. He was a thought provoking musical educator. And nothing was off limits. He railed at the pardon of Richard Nixon on "We Beg Your Pardon." He lashed out at government lies, deceit and corruption in the Watergate scandal on ""H2O Gate Blues."

He was outraged at the murder of Jose Campos Torres, an army vet murdered by two Houston police officers, on "Jose Campos Torres." He took a shot at the spending on space exploration with so many problems on Earth on "Space Shuttle." He mocked America's bicentennial hoopla in 1976 on "Bicentennial Blues." He lambasted prison abuses following the Attica prison uprising on "The Prisoner."

His landmark album Winter in America was at both a grim, bitter, look at racial and political oppression in America and optimistic call for the forces of hope and change to renew the struggle against it. His equally signature From South Africa to South Carolina forcefully and brilliantly linked the struggles of African and African-Americans against apartheid,racism, colonialism and neo-colonialism. To Heron, the struggles were one and the same. The oppressor was one and the same, and those struggling against it shared a common bond.

The other mark of Heron's genius was that he did not just wage a bitter lyrical battle against the purveyors of oppression. He did it with style, wit, and humor. There was a sort of impishness in his satirizing and poking fun at everyone from Nixon to the mainstream civil rights leaders of the day.—TheGrio

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The Funk Era and Beyond New Perspectives on Black Popular Culture Edited by Tony Bolden Paying homage to the ancestors (Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Professor Longhair), sitting at the feet of the elders (George Clinton, Sly Stone, James Brown) and welcoming a brand new generation of griots headed by funkmaster Aaron McGruder, The Funk Era and Beyond fills the largest remaining gap in the conversation on African-American music. Bolden's collection is theoretically sophisticated, endlessly provocative and, best of all, a joy to read.”—Craig Werner, Professor and Chair, Department of Afro-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America This engaging book takes the reader on a journey across the multi-layered and multidisciplinary terrain of funk. This series of essays on music and the visual and literary arts reveal how ‘da funk’ represents innovation and aesthetic principles rooted in the Black vernacular, which defines the uniqueness of Black creativity. The Funk Era and Beyond is a must-read to understand funk as a philosophy, an attitude, a way of life, and more broadly, a cultural phenomena.—Portia K. Maultsby, Indiana University and editor of African American Music: An Introduction

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The Funk Era and Beyond New Perspectives on Black Popular Culture Edited by Tony Bolden Table of Contents I. Prelude from the Funkmaster * Sly Stone and the Sanctified Church--Mark Anthony Neal * II. Introduction * Theorizing the Funk: An Introduction--Tony Bolden * III. Inside the Funk Shop: Writings on the Funk Band Era *A Philosophy of Funk: The Politics and Pleasure of a Parliafunkadelicment Thang!—Amy Nathan Wright * James Brown: Icon of Black Power—Rickey Vincent * "The Land of Funk": Dayton, Ohio--Scot Brown * From the Crib to the Coliseum: An Interview with Bootsy Collins—Thomas Sayers Ellis * IV.Impressions: Funkativity and Visual Art * Cane Fields, Blues Text-ure: An Improvisational—Karen Ohnesorge * Good Morning Blues—Maurice Bryan * Shine2.0: Aaron McGruder's Huey Freeman as Contemporary Folk Hero—Howard Rambsy II * V. Funkintelechy: (Re)cognizing Black Writing *Alabama—Aldon Nielsen * Jazz Aesthetics and the Revision of Myth in Leon Forrest's There Is a Tree More Ancient than Eden—Dana Williams * Living the Funk: Lifestyle, Lyricism, and Lessons in—Carmen Phelps * Modern and Contemporary Art of Black Women * Cultural Memory in Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men Ondra Krouse-Dismukes* VI. Imagine That: Fonky Blues Rockin and Rollin * Funkin' with Bach: The Impact of Professor Longhair on Rock'n'Roll—Cheryl L. Keys * Blue/Funk as Political Philosophy: The Poetry of Gil Scott-Heron—Tony Bolden Tony Bolden is Associate Professor of African American Literature and Culture, University of Alabama and is the author of Afro-Blue:Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture

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AALBC.com's 25 Best Selling Books

 

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#5 - Stackin' Paper 2 Genesis' Payback by Joy King
#6 - Thug Lovin' (Thug 4) by Wahida Clark
#7 - When I Get Where I'm Going by Cheryl Robinson
#8 - Casting the First Stone by Kimberla Lawson Roby
#9 - The Sex Chronicles: Shattering the Myth by Zane

#10 - Covenant: A Thriller  by Brandon Massey

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#12 - Don't Ever Tell  by Brandon Massey

#13 - For colored girls who have considered suicide  by Ntozake Shange

#14 - For the Love of Money : A Novel by Omar Tyree

#15 - Homemade Loves  by J. California Cooper

#16 - The Future Has a Past: Stories by J. California Cooper

#17 - Player Haters by Carl Weber

#18 - Purple Panties: An Eroticanoir.com Anthology by Sidney Molare

#19 - Stackin' Paper by Joy King

#20 - Children of the Street: An Inspector Darko Dawson Mystery by Kwei Quartey

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#22 – Thug Matrimony  by Wahida Clark

#23 - Thugs And The Women Who Love Them by Wahida Clark

#24 - Married Men by Carl Weber

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Non-fiction

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#3 - Dear G-Spot: Straight Talk About Sex and Love by Zane
#4 - Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny by Hill Harper
#5 - Peace from Broken Pieces: How to Get Through What You're Going Through by Iyanla Vanzant
#6 - Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey by Marcus Garvey
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#10 - John Henrik Clarke and the Power of Africana History  by Ahati N. N. Toure

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#12 -The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

#13 - The Black Male Handbook: A Blueprint for Life by Kevin Powell

#14 - The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore

#15 - Why Men Fear Marriage: The Surprising Truth Behind Why So Many Men Can't Commit  by RM Johnson

#16 - Black Titan: A.G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire by Carol Jenkins

#17 - Brainwashed: Challenging the Myth of Black Inferiority by Tom Burrell

#18 - A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle

#19 - John Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism by Keith Gilyard

#20 - Alain L. Locke: The Biography of a Philosopher by Leonard Harris

#21 - Age Ain't Nothing but a Number: Black Women Explore Midlife by Carleen Brice

#22 - 2012 Guide to Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino
#23 - Chicken Soup for the Prisoner's Soul by Tom Lagana
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#25 - Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class  by Lisa B. Thompson

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Salvage the Bones A Novel by Jesmyn Ward On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.—WashingtonPost

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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America By Melissa V. Harris-Perry According to the author, this society has historically exerted considerable pressure on black females to fit into one of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the Matriarch or the Jezebel.  The selfless Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.      Professor Perry points out how the propagation of these harmful myths have served the mainstream culture well. For instance, the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for black females to feel a maternal instinct towards Caucasian babies. As for the source of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their own bodies during slavery given that they were being auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless, it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate indiscriminately.

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The Last Holiday: A Memoir By Gil Scott Heron Shortly after we republished The Vulture and The Nigger Factory, Gil started to tell me about The Last Holiday, an account he was writing of a multi-city tour that he ended up doing with Stevie Wonder in late 1980 and early 1981. Originally Bob Marley was meant to be playing the tour that Stevie Wonder had conceived as a way of trying to force legislation to make Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. At the time, Marley was dying of cancer, so Gil was asked to do the first six dates. He ended up doing all 41. And Dr King's birthday ended up becoming a national holiday ("The Last Holiday because America can't afford to have another national holiday"), but Gil always felt that Stevie never got the recognition he deserved and that his story needed to be told. The first chapters of this book were given to me in New York when Gil was living in the Chelsea Hotel. Among the pages was a chapter called Deadline that recounts the night they played Oakland, California, 8 December; it was also the night that John Lennon was murdered. Gil uses Lennon's violent end as a brilliant parallel to Dr King's assassination and as a biting commentary on the constraints that sometimes lead to newspapers getting things wrong. —Jamie Byng, Guardian / Gil_reads_"Deadline" (audio)  / Gil Scott-Heron & His Music  Gil Scott Heron Blue Collar  Remember Gil Scott- Heron

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The White Masters of the World

From The World and Africa, 1965

By W. E. B. Du Bois

W. E. B. Du Bois’ Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization (Fletcher)

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Ancient African Nations

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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan  /  The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll  /  Only a Pawn in Their Game

Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery

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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg

The Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804  / January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of Haiti 

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