Corporate Social Review Magazine 1st Quarter 2012 | Page 70

Review
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REVIEW

REVIEW

Music: In Praise of Gil Scott Heron
Let’s get one thing straight, right now. Rap is not my
bag. I don’t like it, don’t get it, have almost no affinity
for it at all. But that’s ok, it’s a big world and endlessly
varied, so to each his own.
But I have recently (thanks to Greg Proops and his
wonderful Smartest man in the world podcast) discovered Gil Scott Heron. To some he’s known as the
father of Rap. He thought of himself as a spoken word
artists, part of the beat generation, a poet and an artists. Indeed, as I understand it, he himself did not
much hold with Rap music – mainly because he felt
that it had nothing to say in a world where everything
so obviously needs to be said.Which is perhaps why
there is a growing place in my heart for the recently
departed and greatly missed GSH.
Check out Whities on The Moon – a lyric that if you
replaced ‘on the Moon’ with ‘In Afghanistan/In Iraq’ is
as current today as it was when it was written.
Check out The Revolution will not be Televised – it’s
his most famous track, it’s funky, it’s groovy and it’s
compelling.
But, in the hope that I can convince you to tune in,
check out and get into GSH, I’ll leave you with an extract from his frankly astonishing ‘Work for Peace’. It
was written at the time of the first Gulf War, but could
have been written today (or sadly a week from now)
and it will, I hope, rock
your world:

I don’t want to sound like no late night commercial,
but it’s a matter of fact that there are thousands of
children all over the world
in Asia and Africa and in South America who need
our help.
When they start talking about 55 cents a day and
70 cents a day,
I know a lot of folks feel as though that,
That’s not really any kind of contribution to make,
But we had to give up a dollar and a half just to get
in the subway nowadays.
So this is a song about tomorrow and about how
tomorrow can be better. if we all,
“Each one reach one, Each one try to teach one”.
Nobody can do everything,
But everybody can do something,
Everyone must play a part,
Everyone got to go to work, Work for Peace.
Spirit Say Work, Work for Peace
If you believe the things you say, go to work.
If you believe in Peace, time to go to work.
Can’t be wavin’ your head no more, go to work.
Lyric Extract: Gil Scott Heron
Work for Peace off Spirits – 1994 TVT Records

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