Showing posts with label Hip Hop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hip Hop. Show all posts
Saturday, May 28, 2011
A Sad Day For The American Social Justice Movement: Gil Scott-Heron Has Passed At The Age Of 62
The following video is brought to us by the Guardian UK:
Jamie Byng, publisher of Canongate Books, was a friend of Gil Scott-Heron for more than 20 years. During 2010 they recorded this interview in London where the rapper-poet talked about his life and work, interspersed with intimate performances of his music. A fuller version of the film is to be released later in 2011
[Source]
Juan Cole @ Informed Comment had this to say:
Ironically, his obituary will not be televised because television news became just what he predicted.(Because:)
The Monetary
They get together
Whenever they think it necessary
They are turning our brothers and sisters into mercenaries
They are turning parts of the planet into a cemetery...
"Better Work For Peace, ’cause peace ain’t comin’ this way."
A note from Razer Raygun: I spent a decade and a half doing audio reinforcement for live performances in Central California, and one of the first gigs I ever worked was in 1982/3 for KUSP Santa Cruz community radio doing sound and a live broadcast of Gil Scott-Heron from Soledad prison. Like BB King, Gil Scott-Heron was a tireless worker for social justice and DID NOT forget his brothers imprisoned in America’s gulags.
Rest in Peace Gil Scott-Heron, you WILL be remembered.
A very well-written summation of Gil Sott-Heron's life and times from the Telegraph UK.
Gil Scott-Heron, who died on May 27 aged 62, was a composer, musician, poet and author whose writings and recordings provided a vivid, and often stinging, commentary on social injustice and the black American experience; his declamatory singing style, allied to the overtly political content of his work, made him widely recognised as one of the inspirational figures of rap music.
Scott-Heron first came to attention with his 1970 recording The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, an attack on the mindless and anaesthetising effects of the mass media and a call to arms to the black community: “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.”
Written when Scott Heron was just 18, it first appeared in the form of a spoken-word recitation, his impassioned incantation accompanied only by congas and bongo drums, on his debut album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox.
The following year Scott-Heron recorded the song for a second time, this time with a full band, for his album Pieces of a Man, and as the B-side to the single Home Is Where The Hatred Is.
The song went on to be covered, sampled and referenced in innumerable recordings, the title entering the lexicon of contemporary phraseology. In 2010 it was named as one of the top 20 political songs by the New Statesman.
Scott-Heron’s music reflected something of the militancy and self-assertiveness of such theorists and polemicists as Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael. Over the course of some 20 albums he produced a series of sardonic and biting commentaries on ghetto life and racial injustice, including Whitey’s On The Moon, Home Is Where The Hatred Is, The Bottle (a lamentation about people squandering their lives on liquor, set to an irresistibly seductive Latin beat) and the anti-apartheid anthem Johannesburg.
But anger was only colour in Scott-Heron’s music palette; songs such as Must Be Something and It’s Your World were moving affirmations of faith in the power of the human spirit...
[In full, a succinct but detailed biography]
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Inspired By Uprisings In North Africa And The Middle East Revolution Spreads To America - Rap News 7
[9 minutes 58 seconds, Pop Out Player?]
Labels:
America,
Egypt,
Hip Hop,
Middle East,
Music Video,
North Africa,
Rap,
Rebellion,
Revolution,
Satire,
Subversion,
Tunisia,
Uprising
Saturday, September 11, 2010
This September 11th Get A Clue... There's A Reason "Bin laden didn't blow up the projects..."
F'rinstance, even just the other day:
On Tuesday alone, US drone attacks targeted suspected militants killed some 15 persons in the village of Dargah Mandi village on the outskirts of Miranshah, N. Waziristan’s main city.
The drone strikes have targeted fighters of the Haqqani network, one of five or so major insurgent groups fighting against the US & NATO presence in Afghanistan and against the Karzai government. Jalaluddin Haqqani is one of Ronald Reagan’s “Freedom Fighters,” who battled the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan in the 1980s with American aid.
[Source: Juan Cole, Informed Comment]
Immortal Technique and Mos Def tell it... (Lyrics)
Saturday, April 17, 2010
UPDATED- U.S. Army jails Hip Hop artist/soldier in Kuwait for seeking PTSD help
Update:BAGHDAD — A U.S. soldier who threatened to shoot fellow troops and sent the Pentagon a violent rap song he wrote to protest plans to send him back to Iraq has been thrown out of the Army, officials said Saturday.
The dismissal for misconduct means Spc. Marc A. Hall will avoid criminal charges but lose all military benefits earned over at least four years of service, including an earlier tour in Iraq.
Army spokesman Lt. Col. Eric Bloom said Saturday that top brass decided to discharge Hall instead of taking him to trial in part because he admitted his guilt... MORE
Friday, March 26, 2010
U.S. Army jails Hip Hop artist/soldier in Kuwait for seeking PTSD help
BAGHDAD — A U.S. soldier who threatened to shoot fellow troops and sent the Pentagon a violent rap song he wrote to protest plans to send him back to Iraq has been thrown out of the Amry, officials said Saturday.
The dismissal for misconduct means Spc. Marc A. Hall will avoid criminal charges but lose all military benefits earned over at least four years of service, including an earlier tour in Iraq.
Army spokesman Lt. Col. Eric Bloom said Saturday that top brass decided to discharge Hall instead of taking him to trial in part because he admitted his guilt... MORE
U.S. Army jails HipHop rapping soldier Marc Hall in Kuwait for seeking PTSD help
[Donate to help defend Marc - 146 people have given $5,408 (March 26 2010).
Courage to Resist. March 25, 2010
"US Army Specialist Marc A. Hall sits in a military brig at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, facing an imminent court martial for challenging the US military’s Stop-Loss policy in a song — his pre-trial hearing was held last week on March 17. Yet it was not the hip-hop song he wrote criticizing the Stop-Loss policy that landed him in trouble.
What put the 34-year-old New York City native in the brig were his persistent assertions of inadequate mental health care that culminated in a Dec. 7 complaint to the Army Investigator General.
Just five days later Hall was charged with violating “good order and discipline” at Fort Stewart, Georgia, and was shipped out of the country.
Hall’s court martial is likely to occur late April or early May.
The jailing occurred a full five months after Hall wrote a rap song protesting the Stop-Loss order that halted his discharge after he served his country for 14 months of combat in Iraq.
Hall was charged with 11 counts of “communicating threats” related to the song and has since been charged with violating Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Conduct. All the alleged violations occurred between last July and December, yet not one warranted warning, counseling, or non-judicial punishment at the time.
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.
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"...the military took the nearly unprecedented step of moving Hall overseas for court martial, instead of putting him on trial in Georgia where the alleged threats occurred.
On Feb. 26 Hall was put on plane to Iraq and transferred to Kuwait for pre-trial confinement. This put him out of reach of his civilian legal defense team, friends, and family. It will also make it extremely hard for defense witnesses to appear at trial on his behalf.
“Not just the Constitution, but the rules for courts-martial, prohibit prosecutors from holding a court martial in a combat zone as pretext for depriving an accused of a public trial, counsel of his choice and necessary witnesses,” said Hall’s attorney David Gespass, President of the National Lawyers Guild.“Whatever the Army may claim, that is exactly what the Army is doing...”Read More
[African Americans Sang About The Vietnam War Too]
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