LEFT JAB

The soul of revolution

by John Bell

The day Gil Scott-Heron died, social media like Twitter and Facebook were full of links to “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” on You Tube. GSH would have loved the irony.

He would also have enjoyed a new generation discovering his music and his politics. His poetry ripped into racism, poverty in the ghetto, the insanity of nuclear power, and into the pretensions of liberals and self-styled revolutionaries white and black. It did this with a direct ferocity intended to defy the easy conclusions.

GSH defied easy musical classifications as well. His first recording, the spoken-word Small Talk at 125th and Lenox would be followed by groundbreaking exercises in soul jazz, like Pieces of a Man, and Winter in America.

It was GSH’s lyrics and world-weary baritone that was front and centre. “Whitey’s On the Moon” angrily opposed poverty in the ghetto to the extravagance of the space program: “A rat done bit my sister Nell/with Whitey on the moon/her arms and legs began to swell/and Whitey’s on the moon.”

And songs like “Peace Go With You,” “Brother” were aimed at the emerging black middle-class, lifted up by the revolutionary struggles of the 1960s but quick to distance themselves from the fray: “Peace go with you brother/Though I ain’t so proud anymore/Peace go with you brother/Recognition don’t come cheap anymore/You’re my lawyer, you’re my doctor/Yeah but somehow you’ve forgotten about me/And now, now when I see you/All I can say is: Peace go with you brother.”

GSH sympathetically chronicled the predation of addiction on his community (“Home is Where the Hatred Is” and “The Bottle”). But the struggles that had inspired him waned with the 1970s. He fell prey to the addictions he had previously described, was in and out of jail, and all but stopped recording.
GSH was retroactively hailed as a father of Rap music, a title he rejected, typically, with his tongue in his cheek: “I don’t know if I can take the blame for it.”

At the same time, conscious rappers like Common and Kanye West regularly sampled his lyrics. As a tip of the hat, GSH sampled West’s lyrics in his final recording.

Gil Scott-Heron called his music “bluesology”, acknowledging the blues as the fountainhead of all 20th century black music. But the work of his richest period—from 1970 to 1975—was part of a great explosion of overtly political soul music.

At the same time as GSH was recording Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, Marvin Gaye was at work in Detroit, producing what many believe is the single greatest soul recording: “What’s Going On.” Where GSH was a newcomer, Gaye was a veteran star at Motown, who had grown tired of the hit factory routine.

His breakthrough was an album of long, mid-tempo meditations on environmental destruction, inner-city poverty and anti-war struggles, where each song flowed into the next to form a conceptual whole. Today we take the “concept album” for granted, but in 1970 the form was as revolutionary as the content.

Motown boss Barry Gordy hated “What’s Going On,” and tried to sidetrack it. Gaye headed to Motown’s LA studios to finish it undisturbed. Gordy released it without fanfare or promotional support, expecting it to disappear. Instead it became the biggest selling soul recording to date, producing three singles (“What’s Going On”, “Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)” and “Inner City Blues”) that each went gold.

Although Marvin Gaye had a successful career until his tragic death in 1984, he never equaled the power or political coherence of “What’s Going On.”

Meanwhile, also in 1970, in Chicago, Curtis Mayfield confounded the music business by leaving the vocal group The Impressions at the height of their popularity. He used his clout to form his own record company and retained the rights to all his music. He was the first black performer to do so, sick of seeing record companies get rich off the backs of black talent.

His first solo recording, simply called “Curtis” was a celebration of African-American empowerment. Anthems like “(Don’t Worry) If There’s A Hell Below, We’re All Going To Go”, “Moving On Up” and “We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue” became Mayfield’s hallmark. They perfectly married politics, a deep understanding of human frailty, and trend-setting grooves.

Suddenly, every R&B group was recording political music: “For the Love of Money” by the mighty O’Jays; “I Am Somebody” by Johnnie Taylor; “The Ghetto” by Donnie Hathaway; “Harlem” by Bill Withers; “Chocolate City” by George Clinton and Parliament; the list of great songs goes on.

Is it a coincidence that three very different soul artists, working in different cities at the same time, all created music weaving political poetry through soulful, downright danceable grooves? No: I believe the same powerful forces of revolution and social change that were surging around them, surged through them to break new ground and produce amazing, timeless music.

By the late 1970’s that surge had crested and waned, and so did the power of soul. Plenty of smooth, sexy music was being made, but the exuberance, optimism and fearlessness that epitomized the best of GSH, Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield was gone.

Today we are enjoying a second golden era of soul music, as the forces of struggle again ripple around the world. Is today’s music as political?

Listen to Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings rework Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” a song that has become the anthem of Latino immigrant struggles in the US. Check out “I’m Broke” by Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears. Hear Charles Bradley reach deep into his soul to cry “Why Is It So Hard (To Make It In America Today)”.

And, happily, the list of angry, political and downright groovy new soul is growing longer every day.