Legendary US musician and poet Gil Scott-Heron, often cited as one of the Godfathers of Rap, has died in a New York hospital aged 62.
According to the BBC: “The cause of his death is not clear, but he is believed to have become ill after returning from a visit to Europe.
Scott-Heron’s material spanned soul, jazz, blues and the spoken word. His 1970s work heavily influenced the US hip-hop and rap scenes. His work had a strong political element – one of his most famous pieces was The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.Scott-Heron’s friend Doris Nolan said the musician had died at St Luke’s Hospital on Friday afternoon.”
“If there was any individual initiative that I was responsible for it might have been that there was music in certain poems of mine, with complete progression and repeating ‘hooks’, which made them more like songs than just recitations with percussion,” Scott-Heron wrote in the introduction to his 1990 Now and Then collection of poems.
Scott-Heron’s music and poetry revealed his deep interest in justice and civil rights, and he railed against the consumer society of the 1970s and 80s as well as the development of nuclear technology.
He was among the first artists to use his music to attack the apartheid in South Africa, long before the issue became the focus of a popular global campaign.
In “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”, first recorded in 1970, he issued a fierce critique of the role of race in the mass media and advertising age.
“The revolution will not be right back after a message about a white tornado, white lightning, or white people,” he sang.The song became an anthem for him and several generations of his fans.
He was championed by artists from a range of musical and literary backgrounds – rapper Kanye West paid tribute to him on his 2010 album ”My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” by sampling his voice extensively. After a long break from recording, Scott-Heron found success again last year with a critically acclaimed new album, I’m New Here.
Eminem wrote simply of Heron’s passing on Twitter: “He influenced all of hip-hop.”
R.I.P Gil Scott-Heron. Your music and written works will live on alongside your influence upon today’s artists.
