At 5:33 PM 2/20/96, pyramus@wavenet.com wrote:
>While we were on the "origins of rap" thread,
>(in which I come down squarely in support of
>the Jamaican tie-in), I got to thinking about
>Gil Scott Heron's classic recording,
>"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."
Let's go back to the Last Poets, a group formed out of the Watts Collective
afterthe Watts Riots of 1967(?) who were certainly influential on Gil
Scott-Heron. In turn, although it seemed that the Last Poets emerged whole
cloth on the jazz scene in that revolutionary era, they were certainly
influenced by the Beats and their relationship to jazz musicians. Beats,
including Herbert Huncke and Kerouac, were known to be so transported by
the genius of jazz combos and soloists that they often created
extemporaneous poetry to accompany the music.
And while the Beats were mostly white guys entranced by their exposure to
Black artistry, there were Black vocalists who worked in a somewhat similar
vein. King Pleasure and Jon Hendricks (later of Lambert, Hendricks and
Ross) composed lyrics that followed note for note and line for line famous
instrumentals by jazz musicians of the 1940s and 1950s (John Hendricks is
still active today for anyone interested in seeing what's up with
"vocalese").
Incidentally, I also support the Jamaican theory of influence. Big Sparrow
was the big "rap" star of his day (1960s-1970s) and if Lee "Scratch" Perry
didn't start scratching, I don't know who did.