I’ve been wanting to write more on Gil’s music this whole week, but haven’t found the right ways to do it. I could have probably come up with 20 “Top 5’s” connected to Gil, “Deepest Cuts,” “Best Sampled,” “Top Lyrics,” etc. I choose this list, because it was a trend that I noticed when I was putting together the tribute, even though I wasn’t able to include all of these tracks. Though Gil wrote about a lot of subjects, it seemed to have a particular affinity for songs that dealt with cities. The songs weren’t simple odes to a particular place, they instead served as vehicles for Gil to comment on current affairs as well as his own life. With that in mind here are 5 of these “City Songs” from Gil Scott-Heron.
“New York is Killing Me”
In some ways this song is more than a song. Now that Gil has passed, it seems prophetic, especially understanding the pitfalls that plagued the man’s life. Lyrically it’s also a double reference to earlier songs, “Back Home” and “New York City.” In “Back Home,” Gil is reminiscing about his time spent in Jackson, Tennessee, where his people come from (and incidentially very close to the West Tennessee area my people come from, with both of my parents getting their degrees from Lane College in Jackson) but in that song’s second verse it seems that he’s found a level of comfort away from Jackson. “New York City,” seems to back up that idea where Gil embraces his “second” home. Here though, Gil, a year before his death, seems to understand that “big city livin’” has been his undoing and longs to return to Jackson. So we have one song, about two cities and the contrast of life presented by these two moments in the history of the man.
“Angola, Louisiana”
As is the case with the other tracks on this list, most of Gil’s “City Songs,” were ways of focusing our attention on a particular political issue located in a specific corner of the world. “Angola, Louisiana”’s focus is on the Gary Tyler case. Tyler was accused and convicted of shooting a white teenager in 1975 during what I think can be best described as racial riot created by the desegregation of a local high school. At the time Tyler was 16, and one of the black students integrating the school. On the day of the shooting a crowd of upwards of 200 whites, including David Duke, still in the KKK at the time, descended on the school bus that included the black students, in the chaos that ensued a 13-year old white student was shot and killed and Tyler was arrested and beaten into a confession. Despite an US Appeals Court ruling that the trial was “fundamentally unfair,” Tyler remains in prison 35 years later. Gil attempted to shine the light on Tyler’s ordeal, hopefully people will find renewed interested in this case and continue to push for Tyler to get the trial he deserved back in 1975.
“Washington D.C.”
Here Gil takes on the explicit irony of Washington D.C., the capital of our fair land, where the most powerful people do their work, often secretly, and also home to some of the poorest living conditions in the U.S. Gil’s song reminds me how exceedingly rare it is to hear ANY news related to Washington, D.C. that isn’t connected to the politicians, as if no people actually live there at all. It’s only on rare occasions, like last year during Glenn Beck’s rally where people were warned about specific non-tourist areas of D.C., that also happened to be where all the black people live, that we ever hear anything about the incredible polarization there. Thank goodness for Gil and lines like, “Citizens of poverty are barely out of sight, Overlords escape in the evening with the people of the night…” This video reminds me that I need to track down a copy of “Black Wax,” cause seeing Gil walking around D.C. with a Boombox is just about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
“We Almost Lost Detroit”
I think this track ranks up there with Gil’s most misunderstood or misused lyrics (Along with “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” which people take too literally, instead of considering Gil’s critique of consumer culture and “Peace Go With You Brother” which after you get through the spoken intro is a very critical look at blackness, success and responsibility). When I initially heard this back in the day, I focused on the chorus more than the lyrics and took the song as being related to the riots or just the problems that seemed to always befall Detroit. The title is very specific as is the song. It relates to the partial meltdown of a nuclear reactor in 1966, the subject of a book of the same name from John Fuller. It stands as one of the best “No Nukes” songs and something that we are painfully reminded of its relevance after the Japanese tsunami and the Fukushima reactor meltdown.
“Johannesburg”
Closing out this list is “Johannesburg,” which as I mentioned on the tribute was probably the first time I heard Gil’s voice, even if it was in a sample for Stetsasonic’s “A.F.R.I.C.A.” “Johannesburg,” is for me one of Gil’s greatest songs. Lyrically it’s very focused an simple, and sounds like it could have been born out of a conversation. Recorded a full year before the Soweto uprising and massacre, Gil is interested in a part of the world that most people in the US wouldn’t have been concerned with. The points he raises about “unreliable” media information remain true to this day, especially around the various uprisings occurring throughout the world currently. Like Gil, “I hate it when the blood starts flowing, but I’m glad to see resistance growing…” This song also contains a couple of my favorite lines from Gil, lines that I think shaped my own curiousity of the world and my persistence on solidarity with people fighting for their freedom, “I know that their strugglin’ over there, it ain’t gonna free me,” “But we all got to be strugglin’ if we want to be free, don’t you want to be free?” Yes I do, and I thank you Gil for inspiring us all to work towards freedom for all.