Matias Corbett Garcez Gil Scott-Heron: a Black Bullet
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MATIAS CORBETT GARCEZ GIL SCOTT-HERON: A BLACK BULLET THROUGH THE HEART OF WHITE AMERICA Florianópolis, 2015 2 3 MATIAS CORBETT GARCEZ GIL SCOTT-HERON: A BLACK BULLET THROUGH THE HEART OF WHITE AMERICA Tese de doutorado apresentada à Banca Examinadora do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Inglês do Centro de Comunicação e Expressão da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, como requisito parcial para a obtenção do título de Doutor em Estudos Culturais, linha de pesquisa Poéticas de Resistência, sob a orientação da Professora Doutora Maria Lúcia Milléo Martins. Florianópolis, 2015 Ficha de identificação da obra elaborada pelo autor, através do Programa de Geração Automática da Biblioteca Universitária da UFSC. Garcez, Matias Corbett Gil Scott-Heron: A Black Bullet Through The Heart Of White America / Matias Corbett Garcez ; orientadora, Maria Lúcia Milléo Martins - Florianópolis, SC, 2015. 292 p. Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós Graduação em Literatura. Inclui referências 1. Literatura. 2. Gil Scott-Heron. 3. Poéticas de Resistência . 4. Contra-narrativas . 5. FonoFicção. I. Milléo Martins, Maria Lúcia. II. Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Literatura. III. Título. 6 7 Dedicated to my wife and love, Cristiane, and my son, Ravi. 8 9 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank CNPQ and Projeto de Extensão: Cursos Extracurriculares for the financial support granted throughout my studies. I would also like to thank Professor Maria Lúcia Milléo Martins for accepting me as her advisee, and for all the guidance and support during my research. I would also like to express my gratitude to my family, who gave me a lot of support, love, and motivation. Special thanks must be given to Gil Scott-Heron, who taught me a lot about life and people. Last, but not least, I would like to express my deepest admiration, love, and respect for my wife, without whom this research would not have existed – thank you for everything, for being there, here, and everywhere, and for growing together with me. 10 11 My contention is that your blessings derive from your positive contributions. But they must come from the heart. Not because of what you expect in return. Otherwise what you contributed was a loan, not a gift. (Gil Scott-Heron, 2012) 12 13 ABSTRACT This research discusses the poetry and music of Gil Scott-Heron as tools of resistance. In the process of analyzing his work as historical counter- narratives, a dialogue was established with some considerations from Amiri Baraka and Kodwo Eshun. To discuss the ways in which his music and poetry fused into a black vernacular technique-technology, and how such fusion was extremely important in the writing of many chapters of the history of African-Americans, some ideas from Rayvon Fouché, Larry Neal, and Baraka were used. The music of Scott-Heron is interpreted as PhonoFiction by adapting certain thoughts from Eshun. The correspondences between black speech and black music in the work of Scott-Heron were also analyzed using concepts created by Stephen Henderson. Lastly, through an analysis of his work it was concluded that he developed a poetics of the immediate, in that, his work instigates immediate action from African-Americans in their collective struggle for equality and freedom. Keywords: Gil Scott-Heron; Poetics of Resistance; Counter-narratives; PhonoFiction; Black Vernacular Technique-Technology. 14 15 RESUMO Esta pesquisa analisa a música e poesia de Gil Scott-Heron como ferramentas de resistência. Para discutir sua obra enquanto uma contra- narrativa histórica estabeleceu-se um diálogo com Amiri Baraka e Kodwo Eshun. Para analisar as maneiras que a música e poesia de Scott- Heron se fundiram em uma técnica-tecnologia vernácula negra, e como tal fundição foi extremamente importante na escrita de diversos capítulos da história Afro-Americana, seguiram-se ideias de Rayvon Fouché, Larry Neal e Amiri Baraka. A música de Scott-Heron também é analisada enquanto FonoFicção, adaptando-se pensamentos de Eshun. Também se discutiu as correspondências entre a fala negra e a música negra, na obra de Scott-Heron, seguindo ideias de Stephen Henderson. Por fim, através da análise da obra de Scott-Heron concluiu-se que ele desenvolveu uma poética do imediato, no sentido de que sua obra instiga uma ação imediata de afro-americanos para uma luta coletiva por igualdade e liberdade. Palavras-chave: Gil Scott-Heron; Poéticas de Resistência; Contra- narrativas; FonoFicção; Técnica-Tecnologia Vernácula Negra. 16 17 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Introduction........................................................................................ 19 2. Theoretical horizons: A blue-print for thought engineering ............. 23 2.1 Don’t analyze the groove: Music must explain itself .................. 30 2.2 Kinetic music: Journeys into cosmic music, or the music of life. 32 2.3 Poems are weapons, poetry is involvement ............................... 37 2.4 New black poetry: A poetics of the people, the sounds and rhythms of Black America ................................................................. 42 2.5 The creation of a new communicative system ........................... 45 2.6 Afrofuturism: science fiction, the recovery of the past, the preprogramming of the present, and the invention of alternative futures ............................................................................................... 52 2.7 PhonoFiction (PF): a black vernacular technology for the manufacturing of counter-memories ............................................... 62 3 Historical Contextualization ............................................................... 71 3.1 Listening to history: What are the sounds of the past? .............. 71 3.2 Billie Holliday: When the crop bears a strange fruit they come by tens.................................................................................................... 78 3.3 Expansions: Duke Ellington’s Negro music .................................. 85 3.4 Oh bop sh-bam a klook a mop: new grammars, new frontiers .. 94 3.5 Right on: What’s happening brothers and sisters?107 4. Gil Scott-Heron: A black bullet through the heart of white America .............................................................................................................123 4.1 Placing the pieces and setting the rules ....................................123 4.2 Gil Scott-Heron: Immediacy poetics, incendiary verses ............126 4.3 A new black poet: Talking to the people ...................................134 4.4 Tales of a bluesician: America has got the blues ......................147 4.5 Aliens in an alien nation: Ain’t nothing but a movie .................161 4.6 Looking back but moving forward.............................................187 5. A journey through words and sounds .............................................209 5.1 Poetry as a living reality: Black music and speech and the new Black poetry ....................................................................................209 5.2 Mascon poetics: The art of awareness and liberation ..............222 5.3 A poetics of alienation: America, the ultimate B-movie, and beyond ............................................................................................236 5.4 Pieces of a man: Gil Scott-Heron, his poetry and music ...........252 18 6. CONCLUSION ................................................................................... 259 WORKS CITED ...................................................................................... 269 AUDIO RESOURCES ............................................................................. 273 ONLINE RESOURCES ............................................................................ 274 VIDEO REFERENCES ............................................................................. 277 SECONDARY SOURCES ........................................................................ 278 APPENDIX ............................................................................................ 280 19 1 Introduction I break it down with a rhyme: From now to the beginning, let it be like a record spinning / a poetics of presence / contents under pressure. (Miller 32) Concerning African-American History, what would the 20th Century sound like? True, there is no single answer to this question, but I am certain that a lot of those sounds would come from the vinyl, the LP record. Think about a record like John Coltrane‘s ―A Love Supreme‖ (1965): There is a surplus of knowledge, wisdoms, histories, and discoveries, and a crisscross of potentialities, cultural patterns, and techniques in the air around you when you pick-up that polyvinyl saucer. It is a multi-medium artifact which contains sound codes, visual stimuli, tactual textures, a most peculiar smell of enveloped remembrance, as well as manifold layers of narratives: personal, communal, imaginative, and soulful. Hold that black disk in front of you – those tiny lines that perfectly crease its rubbery surface are the horizon which separates you from all that was going on during that recording; decipher the story behind these rings, and you will communicate through this phonograph record with those musicians. You place it, gently, over this teleporting device, known as a phonograph. You take the phonograph‘s prosthetic arm and place it over the disk. A needle touches the disk softly, slightly sensuously, and all these sonorous patterns come out of the amplifiers: the