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The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Gil Scott-Heron

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

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Music for the Weekend: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil Scott-Heron.

In honor of Black History Month, I’m going to be doing several posts throughout the month on influential African-American artists who have all shaped what we know film, music and television as it is today.

Up first is Chicagoan Gil Scott-Heron, considered universally as the “Godfather of Hip-Hop.” I first became aware of Heron rather indirectly in the year 1989, as I was always enamored with the opening of Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. The track - Countdown to Armageddon- featured Professor Griff growling over a chilling air-raid siren: this time around, the revolution will not be televised. It intrigued me - even to this day, with the events of the Arab Spring and Tibet - and I read up on the phrase, which led me to Gil Scott-Heron.

Heron was a revelation, a window to a world that I had never seen but hear lore of. Alcohol and drug-riddled streets of New York City, police brutality and racial profiling, and the plight of Africans in Africa. It was like having a unfiltered news feed directly into my brain. That Heron was able to do this with a deft musical sensibility places him long before Grandmaster Flash and Public Enemy as “conscious hip-hop” or whatever you want to call it. In Heron the minority had a voice - an unfettered and fearless one at that - and you didn’t have to be black to feel that rage and associate with it. That rage, however, was tempered by an elegance and polish of a musician who understood music theory and composition. Heron’s influences - the likes of Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance, John Coletrane, Otis Redding an Billie Holiday - placed him firmly within an artistic heritage that embraced composition and message as one. He, along with the likes of Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield, became the messengers of Black America to the masses.

Heron’s legacy therefore is not just a musical or political one, rather it is a philosophical approach to civil disobedience, one where the message of discontent is legitimized by a complete academic and didactic embracing of craft. Eloquence over arrogance, form becoming function. In his late years, Heron became increasingly critical of hip-hop musicians, imploring them to study music history and composition and not simply posture. It’s a distinction seen in the best of contemporary hip-hop, from the likes of Public Enemy, Common, Nas, Mos Def, Niki Minaj, and Kanye West - artists whose musicality stands as loud and strong as their swagger.

From a personal standpoint - and a cinematic one - Gil Scott-Heron is that very essence of films like La Haine and Do the Right Thing, films that engage classical artistic craft whilst brimming with a raw energy of discontent and polemics. This is how I want to make cinema, how I want to make art, how I want to lead my life. It is Frederick Douglass writing with a greater eloquence than his White slaveowners, it is Mohandas Gandhi demonstrating that the pen was indeed mightier than the sword, it is the youth of Occupy Wall Street demonstrating that theirs is a war against policy and ideology, and not class. Our words must carry the weight of our intentions, otherwise they will fall flat. That is the legacy of Gil Scott-Heron, and one we must never forget.

Keep Scott-Heron in mind when we’re inundated with countless inane, victimized Super Bowl ads this weekend. The revolution will not be televised. Have a great weekend!