Africa Speaks Reasoning Forum

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Gil Scott-Heron

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.


There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.
_________________

"Progress" affects few. Only revolution can affect many." Alice Walker

(http://aalbc.com/authors/images/gil-sc14.jpg)

At 49, Gil Scott-Heron stands as a towering figure of black popular music. With a masters in creative writing from Johns Hopkins, the writer, poet, composer, pianist, and modern-day griot is a true artist in an industry lacking true artistry.
Scott-Heron emerged in the early 1970s with albums such as What's Going On and There's A Riot Goin'On. By 1970, there was a profound shift in the struggle for equality as the fight for civil rights gave way to the demand for Black Power. The Civil Rights Movement had lost its focus, being ripped apart by differing interest groups and ignored by a wartime US government. The voices of its leaders were silenced by jail or bullets.

Black popular music reflected this change. The voices on the radio stopped preaching brotherhood and togetherness and started reporting the facts, and the music got more aggressive. Leading the new attack was a new voice: articulate, uncompromising, and enraged. The voice held the light up to the country's missteps and shook up an apathetic audience. The voice was Gil Scott-Heron's. Scott-Heron was born in Chicago in 1949. He grew up in Lincoln, Tennessee and later the Chelsea neighborhood of the Bronx.

As a student, he admired the poetry of Langston Hughes and followed his footsteps by enrolling in Lincoln University. By age 20, he completed the novel The Vulture and the book of poetry, Small Talk At 125th & Lenox. The Vulture was an auspicious beginning, heralded by Essence as "a strong start for a writer with important things to say." In the 1970's, Scott-Heron hooked up with Flying Dutchman records to produce several important albums including Pieces of Man and Free Will.

During the 1980s, for Arista label, Scott-Heron released twelve albums. Then, after a twelve-year break, he signed with TVT Records and released Spirits in 1993. The first cut of this album, "Message To The Messenger," is a warning to today's rappers, urging them to take responsibility in their art and in their communities. Since then, he has played to sell-out crowds all over the world, performing at major festivals in England and the United States, including New York's Central Park.

Discography
SMALL TALK AT 125TH & LENOX AVE. 1970 Flying Dutchman
PIECES OF A MAN 1971 Flying Dutchman
FREE WILL 1972 Flying Dutchman
WINTER IN AMERICA 1974 Strata-East
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED 1974 Flying Dutchman
THE FIRST MINUTE OF A NEW DAY - THE MIDNIGHT BAND 1975 Arista
FROM SOUTH AFRICA TO SOUTH CAROLINA 1975 Arista
IT'S YOUR WORLD - LIVE 1976 Arista BRIDGES 1977 Arista
SECRETS 1978 Arista
THE MIND OF GIL SCOTT- HERON 1979 Arista
1980 1980 Arista
REAL EYES 1980 Arista
REFLECTIONS 1981 Arista
MOVING TARGET 1982 Arista
THE BEST OF GIL SCOTT-HERON 1984 Arista
TALES OF GIL SCOTT-HERON and HIS AMNESIA EXPRESS 1990 Peak Top
GLORY - THE GIL SCOTT-HERON COLLECTION 1990 Arista
MINISTER OF INFORMATION 1994 Peak Top
SPIRITS 1994 TVT Records
THE GIL SCOTT-HERON COLLECTION SAMPLER : 1974-1975 1998 TVT Records
Evolution (and Flashback) The Very Best of Gil Scott-Heron 1999 BMG Music
(http://a1055.g.akamai.net/f/1055/1400/5h/images.barnesandnoble.com/images/5450000/5454984.gif)

More info: http://www.gilscottheron.com/

Gil Scott-Heron is awesome. I remember Gil Scott as the musical guest on a Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Richard Pryor. He performed this grooved out version of Johannesburg. Years later I got to see him at a jazz club in Boston and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. His music is real, raw, down to earth, on the edge of the groove.

Some hot tracks by Gil Scott, and I'm sure there are plenty more, are: Whitey on the moon, The bottle, Winter in America, and of course The Revolution will not be Televised

There has got to be a relation betwen Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets. They both have music from the 70s composed of rhythm-backed revolutionary spoken word, and I believe both artists were in New York in that period. That musical approach should be making a come back, it can't be over.

Kebo

[smiley=thumbsup.gif] yes Gil is the man. His powerful messages built up the community. He is one of my favorite Artists. I have to say!

B.K

"Must be somethin'
Must be somethin' we can do.
Must be somethin'
Must be somethin' we can do.

We didn't come all this way
just to give up,
We didn't struggle all this time
to say we had enough.

We didn't come all this way
in the dead of night
To give up now that we
see the light.
See the light.

Tell you somethin'
Tell you somethin'
You can do.
Keep on movin'
Keep on movin'
For what's true."

Yes. and this:

"Don't give up,
It's time to stop your fallin',
You been down long enough.
Can't you hear the Spirit callin?
Feel the Spirit,
Can't you hear it
callin' your name?"

Here is 'Work for Peace' from Gil's "Spirits" album.
It's good to remember today.


WORK FOR PEACE
Gil Scott Heron

Back when Eisenhower was the President,
Golf courses was where most of his time was spent.
So I never really listened to what the President said,
Because in general I believed that the General was politically dead.

But he always seemed to know when the muscles were about to be flexed,
Because I remember him saying something, mumbling something about a
Military Industrial Complex.
Americans no longer fight to keep their shores safe,
Just to keep the jobs going in the arms making workplace.
Then they pretend to be gripped by some sort of political reflex,
But all they're doing is paying dues to the Military Industrial Complex.

The Military and the Monetary,
The Military and the Monetary,
The Military and the Monetary.
The Military and the Monetary,
get together whenever they think its necessary,

They turn our brothers and sisters into mercenaries, they are turning
the planet into a cemetery.
The Military and the Monetary, use the media as intermediaries,
they are determined to keep the citizens secondary, they make so many
decisions that are arbitrary.

We're marching behind a commander in chief,
who is standing under a spotlight shaking like a leaf.
but the ship of state had landed on an economic reef,
so we knew he was going to bring us messages of grief.

The Military and the Monetary,
were shielded by January and went storming into February,
Brought us pot bellied generals as luminaries,
two weeks ago I hadn't heard of the son of a bitch,
now all of a sudden he's legendary.

They took the honour from the honourary,
they took the dignity from the dignitaries,
they took the secrets from the secretary,
but they left the bitch an obituary.

The Military and the Monetary,
from thousands of miles away in a Saudi Arabian sanctuary,
had us all scrambling for our dictionaries,
cause we couldn't understand the f***in vocabulary.

Yeah, there was some smart bombs,
but there was some dumb ones as well,
scared the hell out of CNN in that Baghdad hotel.

The Military and the Monetary,
they get together whenever they think its necessary,
War in the desert sometimes sure is scary,
but they beamed out the war to all their subsidiaries.
Tried to make So Damn Insane a worthy adversary,
keeping the citizens secondary,
scaring old folks into coronaries.

The Military and the Monetary,
from thousands of miles in a Saudi Arabian sanctuary,
kept us all wondering if all of this was really truely, necessary.

We've got to work for Peace,
Peace ain't coming this way.
If we only work for Peace,
If everyone believed in Peace the way they say they do,
we'd have Peace.

The only thing wrong with Peace,
is that you can't make no money from it.

The Military and the Monetary,
they get together whenever they think its necessary,
they've turned our brothers and sisters into mercenaries,
they are turning the planet, into a cemetery.

Got to work for Peace,
Peace ain't coming this way.

We should not allow ourselves to be mislead,
by talk of entering a time of Peace,
Peace is not the absence of war,
it is the absence of the rules of war and the threats of war and the
preparation for war.
Peace is not the absence of war,
it is the time when we will all bring ourselves closer to each other,
closer to building a structure that is unique within ourselves
because we have finally come to Peace within ourselves.

The Military and the Monetary,
The Military and the Monetary,
The Military and the Monetary.
Get together whenever they think its necessary,
they've turned our brothers and sisters into mercenaries,
they are turning parts of the planet, into a cemetery.

The Military and the Monetary,
The Military and the Monetary,
We hounded the Ayatollah religiously,
Bombed Libya and killed Quadafi's son hideously.
We turned our back on our allies the Panamanians,
and saw Ollie North selling guns to the Iranians.
Watched Gorbachev slaughtering Lithuanians,
We better warn the Amish,
they may bomb the Pennsylvanians.

The Military and the Monetary,
get together whenever they think its necessary,
they have turned our brothers and sisters into mercenaries,
they are turning the planet, into a cemetery.

I don't want to sound like no late night commercial,
but its a matter of fact that there are thousands of children all over
the world
in Asia and Africa and in South America who need our help.

When they start talking about 55 cents a day and 70 cents a day,
I know a lot of folks feel as though that,
thats not really any kind of contribution to make,
but we had to give up a dollar and a half just to get in the subway
nowadays.

So this is a song about tommorrow and about how tommorrow can be better.
if we all,
"Each one reach one, Each one try to teach one".

Nobody can do everything,
but everybody can do something,
everyone must play a part,
everyone got to go to work, Work for Peace.

Spirit Say Work, Work for Peace
If you believe the things you say, go to work.
If you believe in Peace, time to go to work.
Cant be wavin your head no more, go to work.

Oh Yeah, I enjoy Gil enlightened messages...
thanks for sharing Rootsie!!

B.K