Gil Scott Heron

[I_ziz]

Gil Scott-Heron
Tribute to the Man

Gil Scott-Heron's story is a messy tale of poverty, creative paralysis and the mundane horrors of thousands of drug addicts whose fates do not make headlines on MTV News. Most depressing is the fact that a man who spent 30 years dispensing advice to black America - about escaping the ghetto, taking control, dodging poverty's pitfalls - ended up ignoring it.

Born in Chicago in 1949, Scott-Heron had a difficult, itinerant childhood. After his parents divorced he was sent to live with his grandmother in Lincoln, Tennessee. A civil rights campaigner, she introduced him to both music and literature. But the young Scott-Heron endured constant racial abuse as one of only three black children picked to "integrate" into a white elementary school in nearby Jackson. Returning to New York to live with his mother, he got a different perspective on oppression in the housing projects of the Bronx.

But he was too bright to settle for less. After publishing an acclaimed novel, The Vulture, at the age of 19, he won a place at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania, the alma mater of his hero, black poet Langston Hughes. He dropped out after a year to pursue a career in poetry. In 1970 producer Bob Thiele convinced him to set his first collection, Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, to music; the album's conversational style and funky percussion earned Scott-Heron the tag of "the godfather of rap". He once joked, with typical insouciance: "I ain't saying I didn't invent rapping. I just cannot recall the circumstances."

Classic protest songs such as The Revolution Will Not Be Televised and Whitey On the Moon were fuelled by a keen, angry intelligence. His back catalogue also boasts several articulate dissections of an addict's mindset, including The Bottle and Angel Dust. On 1971's Home Is Where the Hatred Is, he sang, "You keep saying kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it, God but did you ever try to turn your sick soul inside out so that the world can watch you die?" It has never been clearly established when Scott-Heron became addicted to cocaine; looking back on his works about drugs, it seems the line between empathy and autobiography was blurred throughout his career. Even in recent years, he has used his ready wit to fudge the issue of his drug use.

Apart, perhaps, from glue, there has never been a drug more impervious to glamour than crack cocaine; there is no "crackhead chic". For the typical rock casualty, fame provides both the psychological pressures that create a drug habit and the funds to feed it. But crack whiffs of the ghetto, rather than the hotel suite. In jail for crack possession, Scott-Heron is not a victim of the high life. It is almost as if he never left the housing projects in the first place. In a letter faxed to Justice Berkman this year, Scott-Heron's ex-girlfriend, Monique de Latour, painted a grim picture. She wrote that he "spends around $2,000 a week on cocaine, he does not have a home, he's been living in a crack house for a year," and owed $20,000 for his mother's funeral. She further alleged that she once came home to find her partner "buck naked with a bunch of $2 crack whores" and that he would remove all the lightbulbs in his apartment because he was convinced someone was spying on him. In 1999, she obtained a restraining order against him after he hurled a table at her.

Scott-Heron accepted the restraining order, but denied her other claims and refused to concede the need to enter rehab. "To rehabilitate for what?" he asked the Village Voice. "For some people to call the judge and say things I can't defend myself against?"

Regardless, the state of his career speaks volumes. From 1970 to 1982 he released a new studio album almost every year. Since then, he has managed just one, 1994's Spirits. He paid the bills by voicing the classic Tango ad ("You know when you've been Tangoed").

It's conceivable that prison might shock him into recovery, but equally possible that it may worsen his plight. "I have heard drugs are easy to get in jail," de Latour wrote to Berkman, pleading for clemency. "If he could be put in a drug programme in a place where he cannot leave for at least a year or more, this may save his life." That option is now gone. The bleakest diagnosis comes from Scott-Heron's own Angel Dust: "Down some dead-end streets there ain't no turnin' back." It would be a relief if on that point one of America's most insightful lyricists was wrong.

Gil Scott-Heron got out of prison on the 28th October 2002. At the end of October 2003, on his way to a gig in Chicago, he was arrested at La Guardia airport, New York. He’s charged with possession of a controlled substance and detained at Rikers Island Penitentiary between the airport and the Bronx. He got out in June 2004.

1970s black consciousness activist, Gil Scott Heron, was sentenced to two to four years in Queens Supreme Court for violating a plea deal on a drug charge. Heron violated the deal by leaving the drug treatment center he was placed in, the New York Post reported Thursday. The 56-year-old musician, poet and singer, regarded as a founding father of Hip Hop, stirred the political pot with his 1970s hit songs The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Johannesburg, about apartheid in South Africa, and The Bottle. Heron said the in-patient rehab clinic stopped giving him his HIV medication and since Heron is HIV positive, he left. The prosecution noted Heron once left treatment for an appearance with singer Alicia Keys.

Now that Gil's address has become public knowledge, I would encourage all who intend to write should do so with the respect of his privacy in mind. And if you are going to send parcels, please make certain that you adhere to the guidelines established by the facility.

Words of encouragement and support would certainly go a long way. And if he has access to the internet, as it has been suggested, I am sure that he has knowledge of the group (his family) and their/our unconditional support, love and admiration for all that he has brought into our lives.

Let us return the help and strength this brother has given to us during this, his time of darkness and restore him to the Afrikan Warrior we know and Love.

Collins Correctional Facility
Gil Scott-Heron, #06R3165
P. O. Box 340 Middle Road
Collins, NY 14034

[I_ziz]

zSHARE - Gill Scott Heron - Pieces Of A Man.zip

zSHARE - Gill Scott Heron - Pieces Of A Man.zip
Download from zSHARE (Links)!

plus bonus trax:
Brother
Did You Hear What They Said
Get Out Of The Ghetto Blues
No Knock
Sex Education Ghetto Style
Whitey On The Moon

Preview Whitey On The Moon

[I_ziz]

zSHARE - Gil Scott Heron - Winter In Amerikkka.zip

zSHARE - Gil Scott Heron - Winter In Amerikkka.zip
Download from zSHARE (Links)!

Preview Peace Go With You Brother

[nattyreb]

Asante sana for this, this Bro. is like family to me, even tho he doesn't know i exist. i once had an apt. that was like, all Gil all the time. For some reason i think he was recently released from prison, but he's in and out so often it's hard to tell. That article seemed more like "True Hollywood Story" than a tribute, tho.

i just may be too over-sensitive about that matter, like i said, just please know that i really appreciate the posting!!

[I_ziz]

Originally Posted by nattyreb

Asante sana for this, this Bro. is like family to me, even tho he doesn't know i exist. i once had an apt. that was like, all Gil all the time. For some reason i think he was recently released from prison, but he's in and out so often it's hard to tell. That article seemed more like "True Hollywood Story" than a tribute, tho.

i just may be too over-sensitive about that matter, like i said, just please know that i really appreciate the posting!!

i agree with you sis... and to tell truth i dont know if the information is credible. If anyone is in contact with him please let us know how he is doing and let him know he is very much loved and supported.

[nattyreb]

Right on, yeah, i useta post on this msg board a looong time ago dedicated to Gil, but Bro. Malcolm does not keep much current info up there. One of my criticisms of the board, in general, is that they were always so secretive about what was going on with Gil, i mean it was hard to even get info on when/where/if he was locked up! They do, however, try to keep up with his appearances. Brian Jackson has his own website, but he would also post at Malcolm's site from time to time. (There's also a Gil Scott-Heron group on Facebook)

GSH/BJ Community Forums: Viewing list of forums

i only met Bro. Gil once very, very briefly, and spent that night talking with his drummer about many of the group's struggles w/him. Despite all that, what was most clear is that there is much love, and that they would never, ever dog him out the way Monique does every time she is interviewed. It's so tragic that some of our most brilliant musical geniuses suffer so deeply inside, i pray that one day our Bro. can live his remaining days in some sort of peace and not transition in prison.

BTW: It's pretty amazing nowadays to find out that many young people believe that Gil Scott-Heron is Jill Scott's father. If anybody reading this believes that, it's untrue.

[XXPANTHAXX]

But he is Dawn of En-Vogue's father

[Sourakhata]

Asante bro I_ziz for the post & the sharing. Got the albums but never took the time to convert them into MP3. Gonna blast them in my player ASAP. Pieces of a Man is one the sweetest, tightest & saddest album ever.

'From South Africa to South Carolina' has a special meaning for me and the album artwork is ill. When I was young'n looking for some light & truth, just the title (and the songs too) sparked in me the correlation between apartheid & jim crow that i've never made before. That was when I've started understanding though the beast is multi-faceted, it was a unique & very same one that was oppressing my people whether in Afrika or in Amerika.

Brother Heron is a genius, his legacy and contribution are huge & his life-story is emblematic of the sufferings & struggle our people has/is going through. I join with sis Nattyreb and hope he will find appeasement and some rest for this mighty Warrior 'cause he amply deserves it.

Wow..! Dawn of En-Vogue? For real Bro !?

[Langalibalele]

Originally Posted by nattyreb

Right on, yeah, i useta post on this msg board a looong time ago dedicated to Gil, but Bro. Malcolm does not keep much current info up there. One of my criticisms of the board, in general, is that they were always so secretive about what was going on with Gil, i mean it was hard to even get info on when/where/if he was locked up! They do, however, try to keep up with his appearances. Brian Jackson has his own website, but he would also post at Malcolm's site from time to time. (There's also a Gil Scott-Heron group on Facebook)

GSH/BJ Community Forums: Viewing list of forums

i only met Bro. Gil once very, very briefly, and spent that night talking with his drummer about many of the group's struggles w/him. Despite all that, what was most clear is that there is much love, and that they would never, ever dog him out the way Monique does every time she is interviewed. It's so tragic that some of our most brilliant musical geniuses suffer so deeply inside, i pray that one day our Bro. can live his remaining days in some sort of peace and not transition in prison.

BTW: It's pretty amazing nowadays to find out that many young people believe that Gil Scott-Heron is Jill Scott's father. If anybody reading this believes that, it's untrue.

Thoro, Natty Reb. Gil-Scott Heron came along before we got ahold of Burning Spear and Steel Pulse, and also rapped about stuff reggae rarely touched upon, like our ugly community issues. His drug use reflects nothing except the counterinsurgency, the war against our community. His difficulty in admitting his problem has as much to do with his stance against Imperialism as it does with anything else (his pride). Anybody familiar with his art knows that for Gil-Scott to admit to a professional journalist or a judge that he has a problem is to endorse the solutions that the system must offer. Oh, did I say "offer"? I meant the solutions white power makes you accept, the 12-Step Nonsense and etc. Gil-Scott Heron ain't never gonna go there like that, and that's why I still love him and view him as a revolutonary. He may stumble, but he is still REVOLUTIONARY.

[XXPANTHAXX]

GIL SCOTT HERON - The Bottle - Reggae Sunsplash Poetry RBG Tube | PanAfrican.TV v2.0 - Free Revolutionary Audio Video Speech Library of Leaders, Activist, and Educators

GIL SCOTT HERON - The Bottle - Reggae Sunsplash Poetry RBG Tube | PanAfrican.TV v2.0 - Free Revolutionary Audio Video Speech Library of Leaders, Activist, and Educators

[AMD1588]

Is the Monique girl, an Afrikan wombman ?

[nattyreb]

She's white, AMD1588.

Originally Posted by AMD1588

Is the Monique girl, an Afrikan wombman ?

[Jalili]

Does any one else have any links to download his albums above?

The two posted aren't available any more.

[G.O.D.F.A.T.H.A.]

Winter In America - MEGAUPLOAD - The leading online storage and file delivery service


Pieces of a Man - Gil Scott-Heron-Pieces Of A Man-1971.rar

[AMD1588]

Originally Posted by nattyreb

She's white, AMD1588.

Damn.... Shakes my head and walk away