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Abiodun Oyewole (born Charles Davis, February 1948), is a poet, teacher and member of the African-American music and spoken-word group The Last Poets, which developed into what is considered to be the first hip hop group. [1] Critic Jason Ankeny wrote, "With their politically charged raps, taut rhythms, and dedication to raising African-American consciousness, the Last Poets almost single-handedly laid the groundwork for the emergence of hip-hop." [2]
Oyewole was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and he moved with his maternal aunt and her new husband at age three to Queens, New York. At the age of 15, he attended a Yoruba Temple in Harlem. It was there that he was given the name by which he is best known.
As a youth, Oyewole was influenced by jazz and gospel music played by his parents and the poems of Langston Hughes.
The group was born on May 19, 1968, Malcolm X's birthday, when Oyewole, David Nelson, and Gylan Kain read poetry in tribute to Malcolm X. The group was based in black nationalism and quickly became known throughout the African-American community. They are generally credited, along with Gil Scott-Heron, as being major influences on the development of hip hop.
At one point, Oyewole was forced to leave the group as he spent four years in a North Carolina prison, convicted of larceny. After serving two and a half years of a three-year sentence, because of good behavior he was eligible for study release during the day. Oyewole continued his education at nearby Shaw University in Raleigh, and earned his undergraduate degree. He subsequently went on to earn a doctorate from Columbia University in New York City, where he once served as a member of the faculty.
In 1994, Oyewole appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation CD, Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool , appearing on an update of "This is Madness" alongside Omar Ben Hassen and Pharoah Sanders. [3] The album was named "Album of the Year" by Time .
Recently, Oyewole has been touring the world giving lectures on poetry and politics and hosting a weekly Open House for up-and-coming poets. He has also taught at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. In 2022, he released a solo CD entitled "Gratitude".
The Last Poets are several groups of poets and musicians who arose from the late 1960s African-American civil rights movement's black nationalism. The name was inspired by revolutionary South African poet Keorapetse Kgositsile who believed he was in the last era of poetry before guns took over. The original users of that name were the trio of Abiodun Oyewole, Gylan Kain, and David Nelson.
Gilbert Scott-Heron was an American jazz poet, singer, musician, and author known for his work as a spoken-word performer in the 1970s and 1980s. His collaborative efforts with musician Brian Jackson fused jazz, blues, and soul with lyrics relative to social and political issues of the time, delivered in both rapping and melismatic vocal styles. He referred to himself as a "bluesologist", his own term for "a scientist who is concerned with the origin of the blues". His poem "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", delivered over a jazz-soul beat, is considered a major influence on hip hop music.
Jazz rap is a fusion of jazz and hip hop music, as well as an alternative hip hop subgenre, that developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. AllMusic writes that the genre "was an attempt to fuse African-American music of the past with a newly dominant form of the present, paying tribute to and reinvigorating the former while expanding the horizons of the latter." The rhythm was rooted in hip hop over which were placed repetitive phrases of jazz instrumentation: trumpet, double bass, etc. Groups involved in the formation of jazz rap included A Tribe Called Quest, Digable Planets, De La Soul, Gang Starr, The Roots, Jungle Brothers, and Dream Warriors.
Spoken word refers to an oral poetic performance art that is based mainly on the poem as well as the performer's aesthetic qualities. It is a late 20th-century continuation of an ancient oral artistic tradition that focuses on the aesthetics of recitation and word play, such as the performer's live intonation and voice inflection. Spoken word is a "catchall" term that includes any kind of poetry recited aloud, including poetry readings, poetry slams, jazz poetry, and hip hop music, and can include comedy routines and prose monologues. Unlike written poetry, the poetic text takes its quality less from the visual aesthetics on a page, but depends more on phonaesthetics, or the aesthetics of sound.
Jalaluddin Mansur Nuriddin was an American poet and musician. He was one of the founding members of The Last Poets, a group of poets and musicians that evolved in the 1960s out of the Harlem Writers Workshop in New York City.
The Black Arts Movement (BAM) was an African American-led art movement that was active during the 1960s and 1970s. Through activism and art, BAM created new cultural institutions and conveyed a message of black pride. The movement expanded from the incredible accomplishments of artists of the Harlem Renaissance.
Umar Bin Hassan is an American poet and recording artist, associated with The Last Poets. He sold his younger sister's record player to purchase a bus ticket to New York City, where he joined the Last Poets. In the mid-1990s, he recorded a solo album titled Be Bop or Be Dead on Bill Laswell's Axiom Records through Island/PolyGram.
Jazz poetry has been defined as poetry that "demonstrates jazz-like rhythm or the feel of improvisation" and also as poetry that takes jazz music, musicians, or the jazz milieu as its subject. Some critics consider it a distinct genre though others consider the term to be merely descriptive. Jazz poetry has long been something of an "outsider" art form that exists somewhere outside the mainstream, having been conceived in the 1920s by African Americans, maintained in the 1950s by counterculture poets like those of the Beat generation, and adapted in modern times into hip-hop music and live poetry events known as poetry slams.
Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool is a compilation album in the Red Hot AIDS Benefit Series with performers from jazz, pop, rock, and rap. "Stolen Moments" is a jazz standard composed by Oliver Nelson, and is best known for its inclusion on the 1961 album The Blues and the Abstract Truth.
The Watts Prophets were an American political poetry group from Watts, California, United States. Like their contemporaries The Last Poets, the group combined elements of jazz music and spoken-word performance, making the trio one that is often seen as a forerunner of contemporary hip-hop music.
Gylan Kain is an American poet and playwright. He is a founding member, in 1968, of the Original Last Poets. Kain personally created the aggressive, rhythmic delivery of spoken word aka performance poetry as it is known today. He often performs with hand drums or backing musicians such as saxophonists and bass guitarists.
Pieces of a Man is the debut studio album by American poet Gil Scott-Heron. It was recorded in April 1971 at RCA Studios in New York City and released later that year by Flying Dutchman Records. The album followed Scott-Heron's debut live album Small Talk at 125th and Lenox (1970) and departed from that album's spoken word performance, instead featuring compositions in a more conventional popular song structure.
Winter in America is a studio album by American vocalist Gil Scott-Heron and keyboardist Brian Jackson. It was recorded in September to October 1973 at D&B Sound Studio in Silver Spring, Maryland and released in May 1974 by Strata-East Records. Scott-Heron and Jackson produced the album in a stripped-down fashion, relying on traditional African and R&B sounds, while Jackson's piano-based arrangements were rooted in jazz and the blues. The subject matter on Winter in America deals with the African-American community and inner city in the 1970s.
Tony Vacca is an American percussionist specializing in jazz and an early innovator in world music. He incorporates percussion instruments from a world of traditions that includes African, Caribbean, Asian and Middle-Eastern influences, to which he adds some of his spoken word and rhythm poetry. Tony has been active in the Jazz and World Music stage since the early 1970s.
The Welfare Poets are an Afro-Caribbean hip hop group that began to come into fruition up at Cornell University in the early 1990s, but it wasn't until around 1997 when Ray Ramirez and Hector Rivera were back from college and Dahu Ala was also back home that the group began to perform locally and move towards the recording of a first album. The group has toured the United States, Puerto Rico, South America, across Europe and even part of the arctic circle (Iceland). The group plays Hip Hop with a fusion of Jazz and various styles from the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico, Cuba and Jamaica. The Welfare Poets' music is complemented with lyrical content concerning social, political, economical and ecological issues which has made the group relevant over the years. The band released their first studio album "Project Blues" in June 2000 to critical acclaim and then followed up in 2005 with the genre bending and thought provoking album "Rhymes For Treason" which gave the world "Sak Pase", "Freedom", and "The Media". In 2009 they released a tour de force entitled "Warn Them", an epic 16 song opus which brought the group back to their hip hop roots
James Ivy Richardson II is an American performance poet, spoken word artist, songwriter, and author. He won his first Grammy Award in 2023 with his sixth album, The Poet Who Sat By The Door.
Malik & the O.G's is a spoken-word performance band based in Liverpool. Its founder Malik Al Nasir put the band together in 2006 when he first recorded his poetry to music for his debut album Rhythms of the Diaspora Vol 1 & 2, which was released in on Mentis Records featuring Gil Scott-Heron and The Last Poets′ Jalal Mansur Nuriddin. Malik produced the album in 2006 and Malik & the O.G's produced a video with Emmy Award-winning Director Mitchell Stuart for the song from the album Africa, an adaptation of one of the poems of the same name in Malik's book Ordinary Guy.
1980 is a studio album by American singer-songwriter Gil Scott-Heron and keyboardist Brian Jackson. Their ninth album together, it was recorded from August to October 1979 during a period of creative tension between the two musicians and released in February 1980 by Arista Records.
George Edward Tait was an American poet, writer, educator, storyteller, journalist, activist, historian, public speaker, tutor, bandleader, musician, and performer. He was known as the Poet Laureate of Harlem, and a part of the Black Arts Movement. He was the author of At Arms and The Baker's Dozen: Selected Dance Poems. He spearheaded a musical poetry group called Black Massical Music from 1972 to 1977. He founded The Society of Afrikan Poets. His definition of music is the poetry of sound. He died on November 5, 2017. Tait has been writing and teaching for over thirty five years, and known for having poetry readings and workshops. He taught at writing at universities, juvenile detention centers, senior centers, community centers, libraries and theaters. He is the author of the Black Brigade. George Edward Tait was secretary of the Afrikan Nationalist Pioneer Movement which was founded by Carlos A. Cooks.
Be Bop or Be Dead is the debut solo album by the American musician and Last Poet Umar Bin Hassan, released in 1993. Hassan had spent many of the preceding years isolated from his group and his music while dealing with drug and personal issues. The album was a commercial disappointment.
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