On what would have been his 70th birthday, we look back at the exceptional legacy of the poet, musician, and novelist

Text Robert Blair

Even if you’re not familiar with Gil Scott-Heron, it’s likely you’ve unknowingly encountered his work in some form. The late artist’s poeticisms have taken on a life beyond their architect, from his extensive sampling in hip hop music, to cover versions like soul singer Leon Bridges’ recent resurrection of “Whitey On The Moon” for Damien Chazelle’s 2018 film First Man. This is no clearer than in the piece of socio-political sloganeering that the late poet, musician, and novelist is best known for. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, which appeared on Scott-Heron’s debut live album Small Talk at 125th & Lenox, addressed the dangers of commercialisation and complacency with its prophetic stanzas. The track transcended the real life nightclub on the corner of Harlem’s 125th Street and Lenox Avenue (the future Malcolm X Boulevard) that Scott-Heron honed his provocative material to ignite minds across the world. The phrase has since become a part of the collective cultural vernacular, and while it’s been somewhat disembodied from the man that coined it, Scott-Heron’s wider catalogue of polemical musings and artistic dissension remains as vital as ever. Born 70 years ago today, Scott-Heron may no longer be here to personally reprimand society for its many transgressions (he died on May 27, 2011, aged 62), but his disciples come from every corner of the modern music sphere. Prolific in the 1970s and elusive thereafter, Heron’s bricolage of jazz, soul, and assertive spoken word would have a seismic effect on the music and popular culture that arrived in its wake, even if he was eager to downplay his contributions.

Along with the insurgent spoken word collective The Last Poets, Heron’s infusion of poetry and immersive, rhythmic grooves left a template for the future. In his legendary 70s and 80s run, his attempts to galvanise his community into action in ways that were not only digestible but danceable laid the groundwork for the future of protest music as we know it. From Grandmaster Flash’s gritty reportage on “The Message”, to Public Enemy’s cries to “Fight The Power”, the lineage of these propulsive public addresses can be traced right back to Scott-Heron’s blunt proclamations on tracks like “Winter In America” or “The Needle’s Eye”: “A circle spinning faster, and getting larger all the time / A whirlpool spelled disaster, for all the people who don’t rhyme.” Eulogised by Snoop Dogg, Eminem, and Michael Moore, to name a few, his erudite commentary and imposing performance style granted him the retrospective moniker of the ‘The Godfather Of Rap’, an honour that he was eager to refute. In fact, his interest in the rap genre didn’t come from a place of comradeship, but from the lucrative rewards that it occasionally afforded him. In a profile with The New Yorker, the self-proclaimed ‘bluesologist’ outlined his uneasy truce with the artform that sees him as a munificent well of inspiration: “Long as it don’t talk about ‘yo mama’ and stuff, I usually let it go. It’s not all bad when you get sampled – hell, you make money. They give you some money to shut you up. I guess to shut you up, they should have left you alone.” “Heron’s bricolage of jazz, soul, and assertive spoken word would have a seismic effect on the music and popular culture that arrived in its wake, even if he was eager to downplay his contributions” Concerned by the frivolous use of their platform, Scott-Heron went so far as to formally reproach his would-be students on 1994’s “A Message To The Messengers”. In a rare acknowledgement of the genre’s power, its forebearer spoke of how their art didn’t exist in a vacuum, and that “the gun-toting brothas” were just perpetuating the cycle that the-powers-that-be had laid out for them to subsist in. Released in March 1994, the track foretold the shift from studio bravado to real life violence that would spark the fateful East Coast vs. West Coast rivalry later that year, which led to the deaths of Biggie and Tupac Shakur. A socially attuned poet in his own right, Shakur tapped the legend’s speculative sci-fi offering “1980” for “Ready 4 Whatever”, while his mentor Leila Steinberg cited the poignant confessional of “Dear Mama” as Pac’s attempt at a “Gil Scott-Heron record”. Yet for all his misgivings, admirers of his words and arrangements with collaborator Brian Jackson come from all sides of the spectrum. In 2015, four years after Scott-Heron’s death, acclaimed ‘conscious’ rapper and lifelong devotee Talib Kweli depicted the artist’s impact as impervious to the loss of his earthly presence: “Kanye West, Jay-Z, Ice Cube… mention Gil Scott-Heron and go on about how he’s influenced them. Put it this way: without Gil Scott-Heron there would be no Kanye talking about ‘New Slaves’.”