Gil Scott Heron - Washington D.C

Symbols of democracy, pinned up against the coast

Outhouse of bureaucracy, surrounded by a moat

Citizens of poverty are barely out of sight

Overlords escape in the evening with people of the night

Morning brings the tourists, peering eyes and rubber necks

To catch a glimpse of the cowboy making the world a nervous wreck

It’s a mass of irony for all the world to see

It’s the nation’s capital, it’s Washington D.C.

It’s the nation’s capital

It’s the nation’s capital

It’s the nation’s capital, it’s Washington D.C.

(mmmm-hmmm)

May not have the glitter or the glamour of L.A.

May not have the history or the intrigue of Pompeii

But when it comes to making music, and sure enough making news

People who just don’t make sense and people making do

Seems a ball of contradictions, pulling different ways

Between the folks who come and go, and one’s who’ve got to stay

It’s a mass of irony for all the world to see

It’s the nation’s capital, it’s Washington D.C.

It’s the nation’s capital

It’s the nation’s capital

It’s the nation’s capital, it’s Washington D.C.

Seems to me, it’s still in light time people knifed up on 14th street

Makes me feel it’s always the right time for them people showing up and coming clean

Did make the one seem kind of numb

Gil Scott Heron - Washington D.C

Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron

Gil Scott-Heron, who died on May 27 aged 62, was a composer, musician, poet and author whose writings and recordings provided a vivid, and often stinging, commentary on social injustice and the black American experience; his declamatory singing style, allied to the overtly political content of his work, made him widely recognized as one of the inspirational figures of rap music.

Scott-Heron first came to attention with his 1970 recording The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, an attack on the mindless and anaesthetising effects of the mass media and a call to arms to the black community: “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.”

Written when Scott Heron was just 18, it first appeared in the form of a spoken-word recitation, his impassioned incantation accompanied only by congas and bongo drums, on his debut album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox.

The following year Scott-Heron recorded the song for a second time, this time with a full band, for his album Pieces of a Man, and as the B-side to the single Home Is Where The Hatred Is.

The song went on to be covered, sampled and referenced in innumerable recordings, the title entering the lexicon of contemporary phraseology. In 2010 it was named as one of the top 20 political songs by the New Statesman. (The Telegraph)

Gil Scott-Heron - Newsnight Part 1




Gil Scott-Heron - Newsnight Part 2