The Real Music

.net

Can you handle this jam?  I remember hearing this album for the first time.  2008, I was bar backing for the Restaurant Bar & Grill, my boss handed me a CD and told me I’d love It. He was right, every tune on this album is immense, it hands you groove after groove and I just can’t wait to break it down. 

Gil Scott–Heron was one of the biggest influences to soul, rap, jazz, funk and beat. When he died the world felt it. It was a blow to the art and I  for one grieve every day for him.  I remember his amazing influence on break beat, I also remember his innovative song, “The Revolution will not be Televised.”  But that’s enough about that.

Reflections is a journey, it takes you to musical places you’ve never experienced.  It destroys funk, hands you an amazing amount of soul, and it displays the talents of poets and writers from the era. "Storm Music" boasts one the most sporadic grooves the world has known, his cover of Bill Withers’ "Grandmas Hands" is just intense; but the highlight, yes the best tune, is ""B" Movie",  a beat poem destroying Ronald Reagans regiment. It’s a wonderful, truthful, vitriolic attack against a terrible character who simply hated "negroes"; and that is something close to my heart. 

As a black man growing up in a white society, this album, this man, this character, this music is and was a massive help, to myself and  to the Black Civil Rights Movement.  This album speaks to me, it teaches and I receive. This album is one of the best I’ve ever heard, Scott-Heron could write a song, that will get you involved. It’s an album for the ages.

To quote the legend, “Mandate my ass.”  To quote myself,  and countless others, “Black Pride.”

Slojam 30/07/12