What does it take to be a griot? According to the dictionary, griots are a 'member of a hereditary caste among the peoples of western Africa whose function is to keep an oral history of the tribe or ...

Live long enough and you'll either be disappointed by your heroes or you'll bury them. Did I say "heroes"? Sorry. I meant to say Gil Scott-Heron wasn't my hero. He was an innovator, a trailblazer, a ...

In a recent issue of The New Yorker, there is a profile of singer-songwriter Gil Scott-Heron. His star burned brightly for many albums, first in the 1970s for Flying Dutchman Records, later on Arista ...

Gil Scott-Heron would have been 68 years old on April 1st. I can still remember Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) coming up behind Scott-Heron and blindfolding him. Scott-Heron never flinched, even when ...

Gil Scott-Heron, who died late Friday at the age of sixty-two, was among the very first musicians to understand the power of declamatory singing, of holding forth above a line of percussion and ...

Gil Scott Heron is a poet and singer/songwriter known for his politically charged work in the 1970s. Many consider him a forefather of modern rap for the way he merged inner-city poetry and jazzy soul ...

See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. In 1974, Clive Davis was already a legend in the music business. The ...

When Gil Scott-Heron passed away last May, the flurry of obits, essays, and think pieces that followed principally presented him in two specific lights-- as the man behind the much-quoted (and ...

Not long after the July 20, 1969, Moon landing, Gil Scott-Heron – a poet hailed as the “Godfather of Rap” – released a scathingly critical song called “Whitey on the Moon.” While others lauded the ...

Gil Scott-Heron died Friday, at the age of sixty-two. The cause of his death isn’t yet clear, but Scott-Heron had a long struggle with substance abuse, which Alec Wilkinson traced in a painful Profile ...

How this ancient instrument played its way into popular American Music. By John White, Lynn Levy, Diane Wong and Giovanni Russonello The flute is one of the more overlooked instruments in jazz, but it ...