Gil Scott Heron just passed away-vocalist, poet, prophet- narrator of American Tragedies large and small. The pain he
documented was inside him too, giving his work even greater power. No illusions and fictions, even those we used to keep
going day to day, escapted his sharp eye and poetic imagination. He was there when Sixties dreams collapsed in the wake
of drug epidemmics, de-industrialization, benign neglect ( of the Black and poor) and rampant connsumerism. His vision was as once
global, and deeply intimate. He could write about the aches we have inside with the same eloquence he applied to the nation's devolution
into cynicism.and material excess. Inside his musical universe, rage and irony coexised uneasily with tenderness and compassion and moments of startling beauty. There was no artist of his era who could match his range, his depth, his integrity, or deep vulnerability. That he lived as
long as he did,given alll he went through, is a kind of miracle, and the music he left us is the closest thing to a National Conscience we may ever find, save for the speeches of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. When I need to explain what I see happening in America today, which is a nation turning its backs on its most vulnerable while leaving wealth and privilege untouched, I find myself turning over and over again to songs which Gil Scott Heron wrote thirty and forty years ago
R.I.P. Gil. I share the song below with friends in your memory
The Bottle
Gil Scott-Heron - The Bottle
4 min - Sep 19, 2007 - Uploaded by chieflittlenutsVideo clip for Gil Scott-Heron's The Bottle.www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b2F-XX0Ol0
Sunday, May 29, 2011
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