This is just in case - wherever he is, Gil Scott Heron doesn't know that
we remember, and that we love and respect him.
Because we most certainly do.
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Open Letter to Gil Scott-Heron: Don't Play Israel
April 21, 2010
"Your performance in Israel would stand in stark contrast to your anti-apartheid, anti-racist record and simply be part of Israel's attempt to 're-brand' and whitewash its apartheid system."
Gil Scott Heron Joins Artists United Against Apartheid
Send your concerns about Gil Scott Heron's plans to play Tel Aviv to joanna.dingley@canongate.co.uk
Gil Scott Heron Agrees Not to Perform in Tel Aviv-Emory Douglass Issues Statement
Gil Scott Heron Boycott Israel press release:
"His tone was unapologetic and he did not definitively tie the decision to any rationale, simply stating that the tour would “end in Athens, not Tel Aviv” and that he would only play in Israel “when everyone is welcome there”.
"When I asked how Billie was, lamenting that I, a first-grader, hadn't been old enough to see her myself, Mom shook her head sadly and said, "She's almost dead. It wasn't the same.
She was high and sick. I don't think she'll be around much longer."
"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."
"But what people may not know is that Scott-Heron played an instrumental role in getting an official national holiday to honor Martin Luther King, Jr."
"Now and Then is the most comprehensive and wide-ranging collection of Gil Scott-Heron's poetry ever to be published and draws on work written over four decades."
"As far as poetry is concerned, I was introduced to Langston Hughes at an early age because he was one of my grandmother's favorites, so she used to point out his stuff when he appeared in the Black newspapers."
"Although Black Arts activity continued into the early 1980s, by 1976, the year of what Gil Scott-Heron called the "Buy-Centennial," the movement was without any sustainable and effective political or economic bases in an economically strapped Black community."
On Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson's "Rivers Of My Fathers"
"Water also held the promise of freedom: escaping slaves used the rivers both as markers of direction (most run North/South) and as a way to hide their scent from the hound dogs."
"I remember seeing Gil Scott-Heron play a show, I think it was at the Knitting Factory, but anyway, his telling the audience that his moms was sick, and how he left after the show and ended up standing right next to us in the train station, taking the same train uptown and my being like, damn, that's Gil Scott-Heron . . . "
"the attentive audience received him as a cultivated character composite of extended family member, long-time friend, next door neighbor, street corner sage, political satirist, revolutionary guru, city preacher, and life-of-the-party."
"Harvard usually teaches and socializes its students, often through subtle and implicit mechanisms, to prize tradition and to submit or defer to authority. . . . .
Intellectual independence can be developed by studying authors such as Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said or Frantz Fanon, who present a strikingly nontraditional perspective on America. Resistance can also be cultivated by reading personal narratives such as the prison letters of George Jackson or the autobiography of Malcolm X, or by listening to musicians such as the Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron . . ."
"This is building blocks. I used Langston Hughes and I've done songs to try to expose people to yesterday so they know where tomorrow is heading." - Gil Scott Heron, 2008
Primary image of a young Gil Scott Heron
Thumbnail of the Gil Scott Heron Recording with the title Track - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
(Mention which panel, and your comment will hyperlink people back here)
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