Legend In His Own Mind

Critics in the early 1970s called Gil Scott-Heron the most important Black voice since Martin Luther King Jr and described him as a black Bob Dylan. “His poetry is with much muscle, with stiletto humour, with street talk, much of it justifiably angry and accurate,” the New York Times wrote in 1975, marvelling at the angry man from the Bronx. No wonder that decades later Scott-Heron was celebrated as the “Godfather of Rap”. Born in Chicago, the musician, poet and pugnacious activist for human rights himself lived for years in the Bronx. Returning to his black roots, he died May 27, 2011, in New York’s urban district Harlem. His legacy includes a fantastic concert Gil Scott-Heron gave with his band at the Schauburg Theatre in Bremen (Germany) on April 18, 1981.