For Gil Scott-Heron

Two weeks ago Gil Scott-Heronpassed away. Gill Scott-Herron was an musician, a soul-jazz poet and an author. He inspired and influenced afro-american genres such as rap, hip-hop and neo soul. He preferred to call himself a "bluesologist," drawing on the traditions of blues, jazz and Harlem renaissance poetics.
He was an revolutionist without revolution.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil Scott-Hero

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.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

There is a very good blog post about him on Economist website written by B.R.

IT HAS been a week since Gil Scott-Heron died, aged 62. When the reckoning comes, there will be few musicians who will compare as commentators on social strife, racism and the lot of American ghetto dwellers.

His many obituaries reveal that people have different takes on which album was the definitive one. Some say it was his first, "Small Talk at 125th and Lenox", which consists mainly of his poetry recited to a live audience. His 1974 classic, "Winter in America", has a lot of fans too. Others say his best album was his last one, "I'm New Here", released in 2010 after a hiatus of 15 years. We probably shouldn't be surprised by the debate, given a canon that spans four decades.

But for me, Gil Scott-Heron's finest work was his second album, "Pieces of a Man", released in 1971 and the first recorded with a full band. It opens with what might be considered his signature tune, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", which tapped into the growing unrest among poor American blacks, when much of middle America was settling into a life of cosy consumerism:

The rest of the article you can read here