Take care!!

I always have to prepare myself to listen to Brother Gil because I know–really know–that he is going to break my heart somehow. Sometimes I feel so moved because his commentary is so on point, other times it’s about the way his voice breaks with sincerity, sometimes it’s because I wish he would kick his addiction, other times it’s because music now is just some mess to make a buck. He travels me through so much that I despair over.

What a messenger.

one love,
Ekere

His lyrics are raw, street-scholar poetry. He offers perfect counterbalance to the gentle might heard in the songs of my favorite artist, Curtis Mayfield, who (before Gil) helped make politically conscious music both palatable and popular. For me, it don’t get no more real than that.

I listen to Gil and remember how he inspired so many of us who advocated Black Power. I listen and wonder about so many of us who are now mute and mainstream. I listen and shudder at the thought that Gil’s work has become an academic study instead of a call to protracted struggle.

“…ain’t nobody fighting ’cause nobody knows what to save.”

gil scot’s words are so…..interesting, that you over look the fact the singing in a lot of his recordings sound off tune. it only adds to the heartfelt quality of the lyrics. as a poet, the song seems to be the natural progression, a place to separate yourself from you more competitive counterparts. hip hop poets battle. open mic poets slam. poets searching for somewhere pure, a place free from the competition, find the song. thank god for gil scot. peace.

I’ve spent the past few weeks thinking and writing about Gil and especially his B-movie theory, namely that we are living in a moment where nostalgia is key, and that we’re anaesthesizing ourselves with cowboy politics, selective amnesia and worse, when we’d rather have John Wayne. And Baghdad and New Orleans are not the only ones who can testify to that insight.

He is one the great satirists, punctuating his critique with a melodious line and a soulful groove. It’s uncanny how he does it, that you can’t help but nod your head, tap your feet and laugh out loud even as you want to cry at what he is saying. His body of work is heroic, his prescience altogether scary. But it is hard living as a canary in a minefield, if no one is listening and home is where the hatred, can it be a surprise if there only remain fractured pieces of a man? Dig: I too might drown myself in fugitive spirits.

Anyway let’s kick some urban griot poetry around this joint. Or should we call it soul food?

But he’s a genious. We actually (kind of) collaborated in a live setting a few years back via my old bandmate borrowing my sampler & sounds when he gigged with Gil.

Peace everybody.