P a g e | 1

THE LAST POETS

PLAY THE VIDEO

THE LAST POETS

WORD 2 THA STREET WISE

PART OF

RBG Raptivist, Revolutionary

Poets, Playwrights and Writers

Studies Collection

P a g e | 2

THE LAST POETS

Harlem, New York City, New York,

United States (1968 – present)

The Last Poets are a spoken word/poetry group

which formed in 1968 in Harlem, New York City,

New York, United States.

The Last Poets is a group of poets and musicians

who arose from the late 1960s Africans in

American civil rights and human rights

movement’s black nationalist thread. Their name is

taken from a poem by the South Afrikan

revolutionary poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, who

believed he was in the last era of poetry before

guns would take over.

The original Last Poets formed on May 19, 1968

(Malcolm X’s birthday), at Marcus Garvey Park

(formerly Mount Morris Park, at 124th Street and

Fifth Avenue) in the East Harlem neighborhood of

New York City. The original members were

Felipe Luciano, Gylan Kain, and David Nelson.

The group continued to evolve via a 1969 Harlem writers’ workshop known as “East Wind.”

Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, Umar Bin Hassan, and Abiodun Oyewole, along with percussionist

Nilaja, are generally considered the primary and core members of the group, as they appeared on

the group’s 1970 self-titled debut (contracted by noted Jimi Hendrix producer Alan Douglas)

and, in various combinations, on subsequent releases. Other early East Wind alumni, however —

Luciano, Kain, and Nelson — recorded separately as “The Original Last Poets,” gaining some

renown as the soundtrack artists for the 1971 film “Right On!”.

P a g e | 3

THE LAST POETS

History

The original Last Poets were formed on May 19, 1968 (Malcolm X's birthday), at Marcus

Garvey Park in East Harlem.

The group continued to evolve via a 1969 Harlem writers' workshop known as East Wind. Jalal

Mansur Nuriddin, Umar Bin Hassan, and Abiodun Oyewole, along with percussionist Nilaja

Obabi, are generally considered the primary and core members of the group, as it appeared on

the group's 1970 self-titled debut LP and, in various combinations, on subsequent releases.

Luciano, Kain, and Nelson recorded separately as The Original Last Poets, gaining some renown

as the soundtrack artists of the 1971 film Right On! (See also Performance (1970 film)

soundtrack song "Wake Up, Niggers".)

Having reached US Top 10 chart success with its debut album, the Last Poets went on to release

the follow-up, This Is Madness, without then-incarcerated Abiodun Oyewole. The album

featured more politically charged poetry that resulted in the group being listed under the counter-

intelligence program COINTELPRO during the Richard Nixon administration. Hassan left the

group following This Is Madness to be replaced by Suliaman El-Hadi (now deceased)[4] in time

for Chastisment (1972). The album introduced a sound the group called "jazzoetry", leaving

behind the spare percussion of the previous albums in favor of a blending of jazz and funk

instrumentation with poetry. The music further developed into free-jazz–poetry with Hassan's

brief return on 1974's At Last, as yet the only Last Poets release still unavailable on CD.

P a g e | 4

THE LAST POETS

The remainder of the 1970s saw a slight decline in the group's popularity. In the 1980s and

beyond, however, the group gained renown with the rise of hip-hop music, often being name-

checked as grandfathers and founders of the new movement, and themselves collaborating with

Bristol-based British post-punk band the Pop Group, among others. Nuriddin and El-Hadi

worked on several projects under the Last Poets name, working with bassist and producer Bill

Laswell, including 1984's Oh My People and 1988's Freedom Express, and recording the final El

Hadi-Nuriddin collaboration Scatterrap/Home in 1994.

Suliaman El-Hadi died in October 1995. Oyewole and Hassan began recording separately under

the same name, releasing Holy Terror in 1995 (re-released on Innerhythmic in 2004) and Time

Has Come in 1997.

Their lyrics often dealt with social issues facing African-American people. In the song "Rain of

Terror", the group criticized the American government and voiced support for the Black

Panthers.

More recently, the Last Poets found fame again refreshed through a collaboration where the trio

(Umar Bin Hassan) was featured with hip-hop artist Common on the Kanye West-produced song

"The Corner," as well as (Abiodun Oyewole) with the Wu-Tang Clan-affiliated political hip-hop

group Black Market Militia on the song "The Final Call," stretching overseas to the UK on songs

"Organic Liquorice (Natural Woman)", "Voodoocore", and "A Name" with Shaka Amazulu the

7th. The group is also featured on the Nas album Untitled, on the songs "You Can't Stop Us

Now" and "Project Roach."

Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, aka Lightning Rod (The Hustlers Convention 1973), recently

collaborated with the UK-based poet Mark T. Watson (aka Malik Al Nasir) writing the foreword

to Watson's debut poetry collection, Ordinary Guy, published in December 2004 by the

Liverpool-based publisher Fore-Word Press.[5] Jalal's foreword was written in rhyme, and was

recorded for release in 2008 in a collaborative album by Mark T. Watson's band, Malik & The

OG's, featuring Gil Scott-Heron, percussionist Larry McDonald, drummers Rod Youngs and

Swiss Chris, New York dub poet Ras Tesfa, and a host of young rappers from New York and

Washington, D.C. Produced by Malik Al Nasir, Lloyd Masset, Larry McDonald, and Swiss

Chris, the albums Rhythms of the Diaspora; Vol. 1 & 2 are the first of their kind to unite these

pioneers of poetry and hip hop with each other.

In 2010, Abiodun Oyowele was among the artists featured on the Welfare Poets' produced Cruel

And Unusual Punishment, a CD compilation that was made in protest of the death penalty, which

also featured some several current

P a g e | 5

THE LAST POETS

Kain - The Blue Guerrilla

This solo album by Gylan Kain, one of the

original Last Poets -- before the group recorded

for Douglas Records -- is a study in angry

poetics, performance art, and killer presentation.

Recorded and issued in the early '70s, The Blue

Guerrilla is a freestyle set before such a thing

was even a dream. Kain's one pissed-off cat,

raging not only against the usual necessary

concerns, but also against the stereotypes in his

own community. Free jazz-funk grooves on

guitars, electric violins, a slew of drums, and

ghostly keyboards accompany his gorgeous and

disturbing ranting that is far from pointless. From

the opening ritual scarification of "I Ain't Black,"

with it's free jazz approach and over-the-top

screaming, to the poignant indictment of "Harlem

Preacher," to "Black Satin Amazon" and

"Constipated Monkey," Kain is a hipster without a country, a street poet without an audience, an

activist without sympathy. And rather than succumb and stylize his thang to get his message

across, he becomes angrier, slyer, slicker, less forgiving, and more insightful. Music is placed

here not as accompaniment, but as a framework for Kain to place his poetry in a context of the

P a g e | 6

THE LAST POETS

African-American oral tradition and the Living Theatre. And he gives no quarter. This man

makes the Last Poets he left behind sound like schoolboys trying to sound pissed off. Kain would

make Gil Scott-Heron run away for fear of being exposed as the effete he became before he

turned into an out-and-out drug addict. There aren't any other records like this; this is the sound

of the apocalypse, one that Amiri Baraka predicted and celebrated. Come to The System of

Dante's Hell as narrated by Kain. Sit down, listen all the way though if you can; wake up. There's

a riot goin' on.

Review from Allmusic Guide by Thom Jurek Source: http://ajbenjamin2beta.blogspot.com/2008/10/kain-blue-guerrilla.html

The album, to say the least, is an intense listening experience performed by a cat who must be

one intense individual. Jurek does a decent job of capturing the essence of Kain's one solo

album. The music and words fit in with what his former Last Poets crew were doing at the time,

although with more attention paid to musical arrangements - ranging from free jazz on the

opening tracks to a cooler West Coast feel for much of the remaining album (though cooler here

is only a relative term - the music has an edge to it).

To me the highlight of the album is the final track, "Look Out for the Blue Guerrilla." The tune

starts out with a basic keyboard-bass-drum backing that has that hazy weed-smoke-filled room

vibe to it as Kain drops these philosophical rhymes that build in intensity and religious imagery,

with a travel-logue that sounds like Kain's been channeling HST as he was writing Fear and

Loathing in Las Vegas, or Oscar Zeta Acosta's Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo. Certainly, the

song, like Thompson's and Acosta's books, captures the rotten core of the "American Dream" - in

Kain's case, laying out a vision of an America with machine guns on every corner, and ending

with a climax in which Kain and crew shout a warning to "Look Out For The Blue Guerrilla!"

If you can dig on some Amiri Baraka-inspired second generation beat poetry, that takes on issues

of racism and oppression that are every bit as topical today as they were back in 1971, this

album's for you. Last Poets fans should dig this. I've heard his work described as “Holy Roller

Existential Blues” and “Poetic Aggression”. That's as good a description as any.

Gylan Kain has kept busy since his falling out with the Last Poets and the recording of The Blue

Guerrilla as a playwright, multimedia collaborations with Z'ev, and of course performing his

poetry both solo and with musical backing. He's most recently appeared with jazz/hip-hop/fusion

artists Electric Barbarian since 2003, appearing on their 2004 album él. and Minirock from the

Sun.

"Friday night began with a sound collective called Electric Barbarian, with electric bassist and

leader Floris Vermeulen, and featuring a headphone-wearing trumpeter who kept one hand on his

mixer, a turntablist named Grazzhoppa and a drummer prone to mock bodybuilder poses. After

an opening instrumental with washes of sound and a pseudo tribal beat, Gylan Kain, one of the

founding members of the Last Poets, wailed and ranted his piece about "My Niggaz" with

textured accompaniment. At one point he came out into the audience and recited in the face of an

audience member who was moved to get up and leave, but not before Kain followed the poor

P a g e | 7

THE LAST POETS

man up the aisle. "Kicking Mickey Mouse in his house", indeed."

"These songs are solidly driven on a simple harmonious basis and are underlayed by Floris

Vermeulen's melodious bass, which gives the whole thing soul." (...) "Vocal contributions are

laid on top of this instrumental foundation. Kain is especially fascinating. His poems are visual,

difficult to pin down in the beginning, but are delivered as pure spoken word, with a flow which

most MCs can only dream of."

Gylan Kain is in my opinion one of those writers and artists who deserves far more recognition

than he's received. The recorded material he's contributed to Electric Barbarian's albums this

decade (along with accounts of his performances at their gigs) has certainly been tantalizing.

Given the dearth of recorded material available by Gylan Kain, that he's had any influence on the

subsequent direction of underground rap is a minor miracle. Some of the more direct evidence

comes from KMD's magnum opus, Bl_ck B_st_rds (maybe one of these days I'll re-up that one).

In the meantime, "look out for the Blue Guerrilla."

PLAY VIDEO

KAIN

P a g e | 8

THE LAST POETS

Source: http://kaganof.com/kagablog/category/contributors/kain/

P a g e | 9

THE LAST POETS

P a g e | 10

THE LAST POETS

P a g e | 11

THE LAST POETS

P a g e | 12

THE LAST POETS

P a g e | 13

THE LAST POETS

Learn more about our Communiversity