A Talk: Bluesology / Black History / Jaws / The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Live)

Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson - “A Talk: Bluesology / Black History / Jaws / The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Live)”
[Vocals/Written By: Gil Scott-Heron]

[Intro (“Bluesology”): Gil Scott-Heron]
Certain people, though have contributed such a great deal to the Blues and to my understanding of it that I have named particular poems after them and particular phases of the blues after them—like, Joe Williams always sounded like a horn when he was doing them Big-City, Big-Band Blues, so I had the Joe Williams Blues down, which was big-band sound. “Going to Chicago! Sorry, but I can’t take you! DU-du-du-DU-du-du!” See that, I’ma write that down. Joe Williams. Yeah, and then, like, on the other end of that spectrum, I had, like, the Jimmy Reed Blues. Jimmy Reed got you into geometry, you see, ‘cause he delivered his Blues from an angle. And Jimmy Reed’s Blues would be something like, um... “Bright lights and big city. Them gone to my baby’s head.” Say, “Yeah, Jimmy Reed.” Jimmy Reed, you see, like... about four doubles into the evening, Jimmy Reed became a genius. Soon as you got right here, you say, “Yeah, play that again. That sumbitch alright tonight.” Um, aheh. This is how Jimmy Reed is the hero of everybody who stays up from one o’clock on. ‘Cause his stuff start to make more and more sense around closing time. Uh, and with all the different kinds of Blues I was getting into, I started to do some research on it ‘cause I... the more I heard and the more I, I, I, I checked it out, the, the more I wanted to know. So I found out that, uh, a lot of poets had worked on different phases of the Blues back during the Harlem Renaissance—uh, Langston Hughes or Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Sterling Brown, Jean Toomer. These people were, were Blues poets. And they polished this, this, this art form to the, to the, to the degree of that it became scientific in its approach. And I... and the more research I did, the more I found out that there was a two-hundred year legacy of poetry that had been fashioned along the ideas that correlated with the Blues, that went from 1789, that chronicled our life and our life experiences here in this country. And the more I found out about our own history, the more I was disappointed about how little we had been informed of our history. So it made me want to put a poem together to explain what had been overlooked. And the poem was called “Black History.” It said:

[Verse 1 (“Black History”): Gil Scott-Heron]
I was wondering about our yesterdays, and started digging through the rubble
And, to say the least, somebody went through a hell of a lot of trouble
To make sure that, when we looked things up, we wouldn't fair too well
And we would come up with totally unreliable portraits of ourselves
But I’ve compiled what few facts I could—I mean, such as they are
To see if we could shed a little bit of light, and this is what I got so far:
First, white folks discovered Africa, and they claimed it fair and square
Cecil Rhodes couldn't have been robbing nobody ‘cause, hell, he said, “Wasn’t nobody there”
White folks brought all the civilization. They said wasn’t none around
‘Cause how could these folks be civilized when they didn’t see nobody writing nothing down?
And just to prove all their suspicions, well, it didn't take too long
They found out there were whole groups of people, in plain sight
Running around without much clothes on—that's right!
There was women and men and young folks and old folks. Well, righteous folks just covered their eyes
And no time was spent considering the environment. They just said, “Hell no. This here, this, this ain’t civilized”
And another way they knew the folks was backwards—or, at least this is how we were taught
Is that, “unlike the very civilized people of Europe,” these black groups actually fought!
And, yes, there were some crude implements, and, yes, they had primitive art
And, yes, they were masters of hunting and fishing, and courtesy came from the heart
And, yes, there was love and medicine, religion, intertribal communication by drum
But no papers and pencils and other utensils and, hell, these folks never even heard of a gun
So this is why the colonies came to stabilize the land
The Dark Continent had copper and gold, and the discoverers had themselves a plan
They would discover all the places with promise—you didn't need no titles and deeds
And then you would appoint people to make everything legal, to sanction the trickery and the greed
And back in the jungle, if the natives got restless, well, you call that “guerrilla attack”
And you never described that some folks might have got wise and decided that they was gonna fight back
But, still, we are victims of word games—semantics is always a bitch
Places once called “underdeveloped” and “backwards,” they now call them “mineral-rich”
But, still, it seems like the game goes on, with unity kept just beyond our reach
Libya and Egypt used to be in Africa. They've been moved to the Middle East
There are examples galore, I assure you. But if interpreting was left up to me
I'd be sure every time folks knew this version wasn't mine, which is why it is called “His story”

[Interlude 1: Gil Scott-Heron]
“Black History.” Thank you very much. Thank you

[Verse 2 (“Jaws”): Gil Scott-Heron]
You see, how, how we see things and how we relate to it becomes very important like, as it was in terms of history, so it is in terms of, of right now. Like, um, you see, when I go to see the movies and what have you, I’d be careful about who I’d be identifying with. For example, like, when I went to see Jaws, I was for Jaws. Well, Jaws was the home team. Sumbitch was in the water, which is where he’s supposed to been. You see? I’m saying, now, if Jaws was to come in here, I would be with you, grabbing something, trying to beat to sumbitch back. But Jaws was in the water. This is where sharks are to be: in the water. You going to the beach. He going to the supermarket. But, see, something like that, it just show you why you can’t hardly have no black people in no horror movies. ‘Cause soon as they found out Jaws was in the water, black people said, “No, I’m not going in the water! Jaws is in the water!” See, I mean, that’s the, that’s the whole thing about it—that, like, Jaws couldn’t catch no black people ‘cause we can hear the music. “Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun.” Yeah, here come that goddamn shark with his band

[Interlude 2: Gil Scott-Heron]
You see, like, like, like, like the idea about how effective or, or how, how thoroughly dominant television, for example. See, television... like, a lot of black people watch television ‘cause they think it’s free. See, my grandma used to say anything I got to watch is dangerous. And then, of course, there’s that old ode to paranoia: I thought I was watching TV, and it turned out the TV was watching me. So they got these machines nowadays, where you can call people and turn it on a certain station, and if they got the same kind of hookup, you can... you can see them, they can see you on the television set. What makes you think you have to call somebody? See, the whole idea became how indelible these, these, these, these marks were going to be on our community and on the way we have dealt with things. We started to, to look up certain aspects of our history to find out how, how Bluesology, the science, had been, had been mastered and brought to this point. And we started to look at certain aspects of the media as being responsible. We wrote a poem that went like this

[Verse 3 (“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”) Part 1: Gil Scott-Heron]
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 out for beer during commercials
Because the revolution will not be televised

[Interlude 3: Gil Scott-Heron]
You see... a lot of times people see, see, see, see battles and skirmishes on TV, and they say, “Aha, the revolution is being televised.” Nah. The results of the revolution are being televised. The first revolution is when you change your mind about how you look at things, and see that there might be another way to look at it that you have not been shown. What you see later on is the results of that, but the revolution—that change that takes place—will not be televised

[Verse 3 (“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”) Part 2: Gil Scott-Heron]
It will not be brought to you by Xerox in four parts without commercial interruptions
It will not be brought to you by the Schaefer Award Theatre or Miller Lite
Starring Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia
The revolution will not be televised
Revolution will not be right back after a message about white lightning, white tornados, or white people
You will not have to worry about the Dove in your bedroom, the tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs. The revolution will not make you look like you lost five pounds
Revolution will not be televised
There will be no pictures of you and Willie Mays pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run or trying to slide that color TV into a stolen ambulance
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32 on reports from 29 districts
The revolution will not be televised
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb or Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Tom
Jones, Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, or Englebert Humperdinck
Nor none of the other little Humperdincks, should there be any
The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised, and be no rerun, brothers and sisters
The revolution will be live