Niggers Are Scared Of Revolution / Wake Up Niggers – From Last Poets 1970
Mean Machine / Related To What? – From This Is Madness 1971
The Last Poets from Harlem, New York, heavily plagiarised much later in the 1970’s by artists such as Big Youth in Jamaica and The Pop Group in Bristol, 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.
The group arose out of the prison experiences of, Jalal Mansur Nuridden, a U.S. Army paratrooper who chose jail as an alternative to fighting in Vietnam; while incarcerated, he converted to Islam, learned to “spiel” (an early form of rapping), and befriended fellow inmates Omar Ben Hassan and Abiodun Oyewole
Upon the trio’s release from prison, they returned to the impoverished ghettos of Harlem, where they joined the East Wind poetry workshop and began performing their fusion of spiels and musical backing on neighbourhood street corners.
On May 16, 1969 — Malcolm X’s birthday — they officially formed the Last Poets, adopting the name from the work of South African Little Willie Copaseely, who declared the era to be the last age of poets before the complete takeover of guns. After a performance on a local television program, the group was signed by jazz producer Alan Douglas, who helmed their eye-opening eponymous debut LP in 1970.
The Last Poets LP reached the U.S. Top Ten album charts, but before the group could mount a tour, Oyewole was sentenced to 14 years in prison after being found guilty of robbery and was replaced by percussionist Nilaja.
After the 1971 follow-up LP This Is Madness (which landed them on President Richard Nixon’s Counter-Intelligence Programming lists), Hassan joined a Southern-based religious sect; Jalal recruited former jazz drummer Suliaman El Hadi for 1972’s LP Chastisement, which incorporated jazz-funk structures to create a sound the group dubbed “jazzoetry.”
Following the 1973 Jalal solo concept album Hustler’s Convention (recorded under the alias Lightnin’ Rod), the Last Poets issued 1974’s LP At Last, a foray into free-form jazz; after its release, Nilaja exited, and with the exception of 1977’s LP Delights of the Garden, the group kept a conspicuously low profile for the remainder of the decade.
Keen film enthusiasts may notice the the track Wake Up Niggers is featured in Donald Cammell and Nic Roeg’s cult movie, Performance starring Mick Jagger and James Fox and set in Powys Square, Notting Hill.
Jalal went onto record for Adrian Sherwood’s On U Sound Records in the late 1980’s.
Pavlik
March 20, 2008 at 9:29 amJust listened to Niggers are scared of revolution over breakfast and I was surprised how much I liked it.
The message sounds totally relevant today. Never heard any of this before so nice one pengs.
Nic
March 20, 2008 at 10:07 amInspirational music…
Great choices, Penguin…
I first heard them when Graham (the editor of New Crimes fanzine) snuck ‘Niggers are Scared of Revolution’ onto a tape for me in 1982…
I’d already heard a little of the more mainstream Hip Hop that was out and about, but this really cemented to for me as something more…
Link to a Last Poets radio show:
http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/cc/cc010214the_last_poets
‘Performance’: fantastic…
Nic
March 20, 2008 at 2:06 pmThis is a message for Tony Puppy:
Do you have the text of the article “Scissors and Glue: Punk Fanzines and the Creation of a DIY Aesthetic” by Teal Triggs (which apparently features interviews with the editor of ‘Ripped and Torn’)?
I just wondered, as I haven’t got access to the journal where it is published…
and it doesn’t hurt to ask!
Tony Puppy
March 20, 2008 at 11:49 pmYes Nic, I do. Why do you ask?
I’d stick it on here but it’s 10,000 words long.
Here is the ‘abstract’
Journal of Design History Vol. 19 No. 1 doi:10.1093/jdh/epk006
© The Author [2006]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Design History Society. All rights reserved. 69
Scissors and Glue:
Punk Fanzines and the Creation of a DIY Aesthetic
Teal Triggs
The fanzine producer Chris Wheelchair (sic) remarked in the editorial of Ruptured
Ambitions (1992) that his Plymouth-based fanzine is ‘ all about helping promote the DIY
punk/alternative/underground movement, which is, at present, extremely healthy in many
areas, and certainly improving. ’ From the early 1930s, fan magazines or ‘ fanzines ’ have
been integral to the creation of a thriving communication network of underground culture,
disseminating information and personal views to like-minded individuals on subjects from
music and football to anti-capitalism and thrift store shopping. Yet, it remains within the
subculture of punk music where the homemade, A4, stapled and photocopied fanzines
of the late 1970s fostered the ‘ do-it-yourself ’ (DIY) production techniques of cut-n-paste
letterforms, photocopied and collaged images, hand-scrawled and typewritten texts, to create
a recognizable graphic design aesthetic. The employment of such techniques and technologies
has had an impact on an overall idiosyncratic and distinctive visual style affiliated with
punk fanzines. For fanzine producers, the DIY process critiques mass production through
the very handmade quality it embraces, but also in the process of appropriating the images
and words of mainstream media and popular culture. Arguably, the DIY approach
reached its peak in the 1990s and still continues today, having been co-opted into the
worlds of commercial mainstream lifestyle magazines and advertising which trade on its
association with punk authenticity. The intent of this essay is to explore the development
of a graphic language of resistance and to examine the way in which the very use of its
DIY production methods refl ected the promotion of politics and music of 1970s’ punk and
DIY underground activity. In addition, this piece will, through interviews with fanzine
producers, attempt to recover from history an area of graphic design activity that has largely
been ignored. This will be achieved by focusing on three punk fanzine titles that were
initiated during the first wave of the punk period: Panache (Mick Mercer, 1976 – 1992),
Chainsaw (Charlie Chainsaw, 1977 – 1985) and Ripped & Torn (Tony Drayton,
1976 – 1979). These examples will be measured against a discussion of Sniffin’ Glue
(Mark Perry, 1976 – 1977), which has been acknowledged by the punk community as the
first punk DIY fanzine in Britain.
Nic
March 21, 2008 at 10:29 amI just wanted to read it, Tony: one of my ‘hobbies’ is reading theoretical texts and doing ‘research’ (it keeps me off the drink! 😉 )…
Unfortunately, my ‘institution’ doesn’t subscribe to that journal…
Any chance of a copy via email?
😉
Tony Puppy
March 22, 2008 at 3:11 amNic, ‘contact’ me via the ‘contact’ button top right on the header and it will be yours.
betab
March 27, 2008 at 5:23 pmI’ve got a rather fine Abiodun Oyewole cd from 1995 on Rykodisc – Bill Laswell production and co-writing and Umar Bin Hassan sharing vocal duties. 25 Years (the title track) is a blinder, reflecting on their legacy alongside the then current emphases in Rap.
Graham Burnett
May 7, 2008 at 9:12 pmBlimey, thats amazing remembering that I’d put Niggers Are Scared… on the end of a tape in 1982!! I used to do that quite alot I think, I once copied ‘Dib Be Dib E Dize (How We Gonna Make The Black Nation Rise?)’ by Brother D and Collective Effort (out round about the same time as Gary Byrd’s ‘The Crown’, but pissed all over it) for a certain Mr Steven Ignorant which he thought was absolutely amazing, I wonder if it influenced his later rappy experiemnts such as ‘Get Your Elbows Off The Table’.
The cover of This Is Madness looks like it was done by the same artist who did Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew album
Penguin • Post Author •
May 7, 2008 at 9:29 pmIt was the same artist Graham. Abdul Mati on one and Mati Klewein on the other. Same guy different times.
Nic
May 8, 2008 at 3:25 pmI was only young then, Graham, and like a sponge! It all got stored…
🙂
It’s the years from 15 to 30 that I can’t remember so well!
😉
Chris
May 8, 2008 at 3:38 pmIt’s the years from 15 to 30 that I can’t remember so well!
yes, same with me.
I can still remember Miles’s phone number from over 25 years ago – haven’t a clue what my best mate’s number is now!
Was it the drugs?
Nic
May 8, 2008 at 4:35 pmI believe that it may well have been / is…
🙂
jilberia
October 10, 2008 at 9:03 pmWow! I really appriciate the informations posted. After reading it, i now have a broader undersatnding of The Last Poets. I really enjoyed learning about thier radical ideas and thier stuggles of staying true to themselves. It is sad, however, that my generation do not know about such figures and thier importance in our history. Mostly, it is because of the artificial facades that are being exposed to us day by day by the media. Nowadays, we are thought that it is all about fashion and material things. Sometimes i wish that i was born back in the 70s. Eventhough it was not easy being black back then, but there was a sence of pride and community.
Once again, thank you so much!