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Reading on the Last Poets

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Reading on the Last Poets IHI IAST POETS ffi 'ri F -"* ffiffiffiw s; From the volatile sffeets of Harlem in the late'60s, THELASTPOETSweTe among the earliest voices of radical blackyouth inAmerica. With fans including Jimi Hendrix and Mick Jagger, they took Black Power into the charts and helped inspire hip hop. But atwhatprice..? WORDS BY GRAEME THOMSON NHOtlRIhlTONicRoeg andDonaldCammell's 1970 movie Pe rformance, aslames Fox's gangster lies inwaitforMick Jagger's reclusive rock star, an ominous drum tattoo rumbles into life on the soundtrack. Accompanying the urgent, relentless rhythm are two voices: one an insistentwhisper, the other a rallying cryto America's increasinglyvolatile dispossessed : "Night descends/As sun's light endslAndblack comes back lTb blend again" . The songis "Wake Up, Niggers" byThe Last Poets, and even in this very British film its mix of censure and insurrection seems to channel all the tension, anger and on-the-edge weirdness ofthe times. With the old certainties of race, sex and power in flux, for a short spell The LastPoets articulatedthe changes as potentlyas anyartist. Three radical poetsbacked bya congaplayer who moonlighted as aYoruba priest, The Last Poets punchedwell above theirweight. They recorded with Hendrix, were f6ted byMiles Davis, and influenced everyone from Public Enemyto The Pop Group. Theypoeticised the militant message of Malcolm X and introduced it to the rhythmic cadences of Coltrane and Monk. In doingso, theyare often regarded as the godfathers ofrap. "We undressed theword andpresented it to the public nakedly, without anyfrills, and in that respect I can see where folks are coming from," founder memberAbiodun Oyewole tells "" ofhip hop, and theysaid theyhad workshop that hosted poetry readings and T$ the attention of architects Ss S €f{HYilAMH*:producerAlanDouglas,whoselabel nothing else to listen to butThe Last Poets back discussion groups. The bandwas volatile, S then. So we were inspiringyoung rappers from prone to factionalising over politics, policy and :s had release d albums by Malcolm X and thebeginning." personalities. Nelson left, replaced by Felipe LennyBruce. "lalalsaid,'Comeup to 137th The Last Poets tooktheir revolutionary Luciano, a Puerto Rican who had alreadybeen street on LenoxAvenue andyou can see us-but message into the heart ofAmerican culture. in jail for a gang murder. He was j oined byAlafia come alone'," Douglas recalls. "Theywere going Their debut album sold half a million copies Pudim, an aspiring poetwho "could rhyme through the normal torture that young black within a month ofits release in 1970 and before I couldwrite". Shortlyafter, he converted guys from the street go through, and not trustful brought BlackPowerinto the pop charts. Little to Islam, becominglalal Mansur Nuriddin. of anybody. I went to this schoolyard with a wondertheyattracted the attention of the In early 1969 therewas aparticularlyviolent basketball court - no nets, of course - and I did authorities. "We were on the Richard Nixon list, incident: Luciano recalls chairs hurled and a wonder ifgetting out ofthe carwas goingto be the FBI list," says Umar Bin Hassan, who joined member being attacked with a hammer. He suicide. As I got to the court, a crowd parted and in 1969. "I wasn't scared, I was young and I was and Kainwere exiled and Oyewole and there were these four guys, one with a conga. a revolutionary. Everybody always had a gun at Nuriddin formed a newlineup with Umar Bin Theytold me to stand on the foul line, theystood their girlfriend's house so wewere readyin case Hassan, a poet who had seen them perform in under the basket, and theyperformed the entire anythingwent down." his hometown ofAkron, Ohio, and had soon first record." Douglas had access to a studio And things did go down. Arguably, The Last afterwards headed to EastWind with $25 in his nearby, and offered to take them there. "They Poets proved more dangerous to themselves pocket. Itwas this trio, with Nilaja on drums, jumped in the car, andwe were done in an hour. than to the establishment. Their historyis who forgedforward. Cheapest record I ever made." peppered with drugs, jail time, For a year nothing happened. violent feuds and religious Douglas wasn't sure what to do schisms. Thirtyyears before with it, and no distributor gangsta rap, theylived the life would touch it. "Theywere theywrote about. insulting everybody in America, the language was foul. Finally, somebody ryffi ry,ffioH&'{finffiY.'''*flYtix,v{}tr,*{, ffi € David wanted myother stuffso bad Nelson and Gylan theyagreed to take the Poets." Kain, three young black men The Last Poetswas released in living in Harlem, they came April 1970. Fromthe opening --KUn, togetherin the aftermath of "Run, Niggers",N lggers", withwltn llits Martin Luther King's assassination in r Poetryhad always been afeature of Harlem's ominous "ticktock", it sounds like the April 1968. "The killing ofDr King inspired r blackcommunity. ClaudeMcKayandlangston countdown to battle. But it also celebrates the me," says Oyewole. "The BlackPower : Hughes had chronicledlocallife since the '20s, language, rites and rhythms ofblackurban life. movementwas building and I had to become a , butitwasAmiriBarakawho mostinfluenced These radicals stillhave time forthe explicitsex part of it. David Nelson and I discussed the I ffre LastPoets. He lefttheWestVillage talkof "BlackThighs" and "Gashman", and idea of a collective of poets giving an example i followingthe 1965 assassinationofMalcolmX aren't content to simply shout down their to blackpeople. Thosewere the basics that i to create a black arts movement in Harlem, oppressors; the oppressed are implicated, too. started The Last Poets." . dismissingpacifism and demandingmilitant "NiggersAre Scared Of Revolution" is critique Theymade their debut on MalcolmXDay- , action. "Baraka's legacyis indelible," says as well as call to action, while "Wake Up, May 19, 1968 - at an event in Harlem's Mount r Luciano. "Heaffectedthousands." Niggers" doesn't just portray disenfranchised Morris Park. A group ofdrummers had played , Thesepastpoetshadspokenwithan blacks as exiled creatures of the night, but also before them, and they asked one, conga player . individualvoice.ThelastPoetswerea digs at the deluded " co ol fo ols. rapping ab out Nilaja Obabi, to stay on stage to provide , collective, andtheirvocalinterplaywasnew. how the BigApple is outta sightlYou ain't neuer rhythm. As they chanted 'Are you ready, ; Thepolemicalprose-poetryofBinHassan, the had a bite lwho are you fooling? lYou? Me? " . niggers, you gotto be ready!", Oyewole recalls, ' spielsandX-ratedjailhouserhymesofNuriddin, There was no attempt to sweeten the pill. The "beforewe knewit, everyone in the parkwas . the "voodoo" drums-itallmadeforapotent album arrivedwith no fanfare, no billboards, doing it. We didn't have a name then butwe . alchemy. "Itallworkednaturally," says Oyewole. no reviews, yet itwent through the roof. "Every were identified as agroup immediately." , "If someonehad anewpoemwe figured out a beatblock entertainer in theworld pushed that nnnnnA f^-tt- ll T-\^tr^l^- ^^."- '(\AI^-l ^f-r.trflr rr- Bythe time ofits eventual release, Nilaja also left, following a post- the group had once again fractured. show freak- out in Chicago. "The Bin Hassan and Nuriddin became spirits came down onhimandhe Muslims, while Nilaja and Oyewole walked out in minus 15 degrees in his embraced Animism, converting to pants, shoes andhat," says Nuriddin, Yoruba, ob serving rituals and who continued working with El-hadi wearing traditional African dre ss. as The Last Poets throughout the '70s Oyewoletravelled to Raleigh in and'80s, making the music more jazz- North Carolina to undertake direct orientated. They collaborated with action "because being apoetwasn't Bristol band The Pop Group and acid- revolutionary enough," says Bi n jazzersGalliano, but as hip hop went Hassan. He was arrested for gun mainstream the past overshadowed running and armed robbery, their present: A Tribe Called Quest trapped in the woods wearing sampled two earlytracks on The Low hisAfrican robes following an End Theory in 1991 ; Ice Cube called eight-hour man hunt. "Six of phone calls, clicks on the them the "first real hardcore rappers". myguysrippedoff some . line, and how "brothers They attempted to capitalise by contriving a guns fromtwo hardware you'd made prayerwith rapprochement for the 1993 film, Poetic lustice, stores," he says. "Two guys orbeen in a shoot-out starringTupac and lanet Iackson. Bin Hassan dropped their guns, went :with against the police was dragged from obscurity ("People thought backto getthem and got started snitching and I was dead. I dbeen in some shoot-outsbutl busted. I felt responsible. settingus up" didn't die" ), and Oyewole rejoined. Shortly I couldn't get any money for afterwards they split again, and for a while there their bail, so I figuredwe ' were twoversions ofThe LastPoets touring. ffi ffi *album"saidwhatTILAsrFOErs couldkill two birdswith one ffi Even apart, theywere combustible. I ask stone byrobbingthe Klan. We ffi itwassupposedto Nuriddin aboutthe claim that he turnedup at a got caught and I got put in jail. I was F** sayaboutthetimes,"explains Paris showin the '90s and stabbed Bin Hassan. in there when the album came out." Douglas. "lt was revolutionary stuffthat He pauses. "Let's just sayme and Umarhad a Oyewole served fouryears andwouldn't play blackpeople had to hear." In manyrespects, fight and I won. We were always at each other's withThe Last Poets againuntil the'90s. In his anything
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