Gill Scott-Heron

The Watts Prophets mold themselves from the ashes of the 1965 Watts Riots. They're street-embedded poets, welding serrated words to music in ground-level reportage that explains why Watts went up in flames, and why it almost certainly will burn again. Across the country, in Harlem, the Last Poets with a shifting lineup that included Jalal Nurridin and Umar Bin Hassan bellow out the nagging sense that revolution is petering out just when it is most needed. They are far from defeated as they rail. "Wake up, niggas! Gill Scott-Heron swaggers onto the world stage with the rock-star charisma, jazz man elan, and a band, and as they rip a brew of rock 'n' soul grooves, he warns of a coming winter in America, asks, "Who'll pay reparations on my soul," tears the veil off black male vulnerability by confessing that "home is where the hatred is," and closes his set with a prophetic warning to fast-food addicts, to those who self-medicate by buying material items they don't need, and to those who plug into mainstream sockets for knowledge and information. He lets them know, simply "the revolution will not be televised."