THE LAST POETS have earned elevated status among Poets and Activists alike around the world. Not only have they influenced generations as the appointed “GODFATHERS OF RAP”, they have stood the test of time and remained relevant through the release of contemporary albums and features with the likes of Public Enemy, Dead Prez and Common.
Personally, The Last Poets were central to my history and destiny. As well as being raised on their poetry, I became a member of the Best Kept Secret Spoken Word Collective, initiated when who would become its members were asked to open for Last Poets founder David Nelson, during his tour in the UK.
Today, another founder, ABIODUN OYEWOLE, is on the verge of the release of his second album “GRATITUDE”. The album release is accompanied by a Kickstarter Campaign, making art by the people for the people a living reality.
I had the pleasure of an extensive interview with the wise youthful Elder. What follows is a candid exploration in the mind of one of the most prolific artists of our time. It was such moment that I could not find it in me to edit the experience. This therefore, is the interview its entirety.
Baba Abiodun spoke in depth about the role of his Mother and how girls inspired him to become a poet. From the development of the Last Poets to how he stays relevant 2 generations after inspiring the development of Rap. The evolution of the Black conscious Movement and off course how his family came together to produce what he considers one of his greatest works yet.
CLICK HERE to contribute the the Kickstarter Campaiagn!
Special thanks to Dami Akinnusi of Darkling Productions
First of all what I would like to know is what inspired you to get into poetry and who are the God Fathers of the Last Poets?
Well Amiri Baraka who passed away in early January was a Mentor for The Last Poets as well as another brother whose name is Askia Mohammed Ture. Those are two of the Elder gentlemen who kinda helped us put the Blueprint down for The Last Poets. Amiri probably more so than anyone because Amiri would be considered as far as I am concerned as the Liberation Poet. He took poetry away from the Tea Rooms, from the quiet places and put brace knuckles on words. He hit you in the face with Poetry. He used it as a weapon against all kinds of tyranny and oppression and that was something that appealed to me. As opposed to pick me up a gun, you pick you up a poem and you use that. You recite your poem like it was a bullet and you hit people from different angles, but it was all a mental barrage as opposed to a physical one.
So Amiri Baraka would have to be the person that laid the foundation for The Last Poets to exist. Even though our name comes from a South Afrikan poet named Keorapetse Kgositsile, and he was also in many ways, I guess he can be considered a mentor because he had been doing poetry before I was even 20, from when I was a kid. And I saw one of his poems in a fantastic anthology called “Black Fire”, it was an anthology of Black writings that came out in 1967, edited by L:eroy Jones who was also known as Amiri Baraka and Larry Neale. And in this book Black Fire was a poem by Keorapetse called “Towards a Walk in the Sun” and it was a poem describing the conditions that Afrikans had to live under during the regime of Apartheid in South Afrika. So it was not exactly a happy poem, it was a poem angry and disgusted with the oppressed conditions that the natives of that land were going through. And at the end of the poem you could feel the Authors tension building to the point where he even changes the font to bold letters. And in the bold letter font he says:
“The wind you hear is the birth of memory
when the moment hatches in time’s womb
there will be no art talk. The only poem
you will hear will be the spear point pivoted
in the punctured marrow of the villain; the
timeless native son dancing like crazy to
the retrieved rhythms of desire
fading
in-
to
memory”
So that became like an unofficial creed of The Last Poets, that was our premise we were built on that particular, those expressions. So we considered ourselves the Last poets. It was like you could summarise from that line that anybody who was gonna be a Poet, this is the last chance that your gonna get before Revolution’s gonna take place. So we really were setting up everything for folks to have, if not a physical Revolution, at least a Cultural Revolution. So that was the impetus of The Last poets.
Us being called the Godfathers of Hip-Hop sometimes amuses me, because I’ve never been a Hip-Hop artist, I’m not a rapper per se – I’m a poet and there’s a difference. And I’m always thinking about what’s happening with my people, I’m very conscious of trying to raise the consciousness of my people, the level of consciousness and our awareness as to the things that we’re doing to each other and the things that are being done to us. And so Hip-Hop for the most part, its been party and games and a lot of fun. Its almost like the difference between eating something really good for you an nutritional and chewing on bubble gum. And Hip-Hop has been a lot of bubble gum. And every child needs some bubble gum.
I think that people can say we influenced the form, because we rhymed poems and we did them with beats, we used Afrikan Rhythms, Afrikan drums. But that stuff did filter over into the Hip-Hop world because I have spoken to the Brothers who I consider to be the Architects of Hip-Hop and that’s Afrika Bambata and Kool Herc – and KRS, But Afrikan Bambata and Kool Herc, we’ve had personal conversations and they have said to me personally that the only thing that they ahd to listen to back in the 70s was the Last Poets because we were out of the box. They had never heard anything like us. And it was so intriguing they wanted to do something like what we did, but they didn’t have the political knowledge ofrsavy that we had. So they took it to the streets and they made fun with it and they enjoyed themselves with tis new genre of poetry.
So we do get credit for being the godfathers, but really all we did was lay the foundation for Hip-Hop to exist. And our relationships with many of the Hip-Hop artists has been outstanding, I appreciate the connections that I have with all those Brothers and Sisters who got that started. And basically I feel its something that can be used for education and can be used to raise consciousness, if we decide to deal with those subjects.
Is this the 1st Solo album being release by a member of The Last Poets?
No, the first Solo album done by a member of the Last Poets was a piece called the “Hustlers Convention” by Jalal 
Mansur Nuridin. And the Hustlers Convention was a classic depiction of just the life of a hustler in America. We have all these folk tales about hustlers here in America and they’re called the toast, just stories that are actually told, oral tradition, passed on by word of mouth and done through prisoners for the most part from different parts of the country. And they’re called “the Toasts”. Its like a guy he might be in a cell, he might be some place where this guy knows a toast about Mary Fontaine who, she was an expensive hoe. She was the kind of woman that woul make men want her and then she would take them to the cleaners cause that was what she was about. And it was just kind of a fun story about the life of hustlers.
So Jalal who was one of The Last Poets, he was one that did a lot of the rhyme poems in the group, he decided that he wanted to bring out the toast and do this album called “Hustlers Convention” and he got Kool & The Gang to provide the music and he did all the lyrics. It was a very nice album and it was very slick. It was story telling because Black people were story tellers and story listeners – we like stories. So they were nice little juicy stories of the exciting adventuresome lives of all these hustlers and the way they dressed and how they walked and talked and acted and little episodes of their lives.
So that was the 1st Solo. And then the next solo CD I think probably was done by myself and it was called “25years”. 25 Years actually got a lot of play in Europe, matter of fact it got an award in Europe. Bill Laswell was the one that produced that and that was my first solo CD. And I’m very proud oof it, its very well done and it got a lot of attention. The cover was done by one of our great Artists, who’s no longer with us, Abdul Rahman. I am very proud of the cover Because it’s a special cover.
So this is really the second solo that I’ve done personally and its called “Gratitude”. But We say solo and that’s kind of using the term loosely cause I got my kids on there. My Grandson did all the music. I mean this a family project. I’m just the big mouth on it, but the fact is this is a family project. My daughter in law is singing on there, my son. I sent one of the tracks pieces down to Fort Worth Texas where my son lives, after I laid the basic track down I sent it down to my son, cause he’s a musical wizard, for him to put the lacing on it, put the icing on the cake, for him to trim it up, to give it hooks or to whatever he thought would be good to enhance everything. And they took one of the pieces and gave it to his Brother in Law and my son did the vocal parts and took me off of it entirely. I was mad at first. Its called “When We Began”. At first it made me angry cause I was actually eliminated from the piece entirely (Laugh).
But I realized it was so good, the way they did it, I couldn’t deny it. It’s a wonderful piece. And its got the rhythm , like if you were in a skating rink cause its got that kind of rhythm like you can feel like you’re skating when you hear the piece and its so well done. I really couldn’t complain, but it really pissed me off cause they took over in a way that I was really hoping they wouldn’t do. But its ok, cause they’re my kids (laugh).
So this was a family affair. And then my Lawyer son, Mr. Omar he’s the one who picked out all the pieces that I did. I would go into the studio, my grandsons studio, with the red folder with the poetry in it that I thought I might use and my son would look at the stuff and say ‘hey Pop you gotta do this – you gotta do that”. I didn’t even make a choice as to what you’re hearing. So that entire CD is actually put together by my family from A-Z. And I am very proud of it because it was a great collaboration and it turned out just perfectly because of the efforts by everybody.
Ok, Yeah. I’ve got Hustlers Convention. But I was under the impression that it was released under the name of the Last Poets.
Yeah well I’m Abiodun from the Last poets. So I cant get away from that. No matter what I do, that’s gonna always follow me. But “Gratidtude” is an Abiodun and family project. I don’t even have Babatunde or Umar on there. And some people might wonder why, cause on my solo CD “25 Years”, I do have Umar on there and I think I have Baba on there to at some point, because I juste felt that I needed to have them participate. But on this the only people involved are Family members Blood family members.
You have an interesting title for the album its called “Gratitude”. Why that title?
Oh my god! You know because of all the things I just told you. I’m greatful fro having a family with skills, I’m grateful for just being here, being able to produce some potent poetry at this period in my life. I’m grateful for the time that’s been given to me in the world of literature, from all the people who have listened to me.
You know people are always saying to me, when I see people and they would just about fall on there knees thanking me for saving their lives or doing something special for them because they changed the way they live when they first heard me. And I always feel kind of embarrassed in a sense because, my thing is that I wanna thank YOU! Cuz I could have been a crazy person just talking to myself. But you took time to listen to what I had to say, you thought it was important enough to even tell somebody else to listen to it. So the people who listen to what you have to say and endorse it need as much credit as the person that’s saying it. We don’t know what we’re saying until it communicates to others. So I am very very grateful for just having people with ears to hear something that I said that they’ve made important in their lives.
You can’t take it for granted. I might think I’ve said something profound and just wonderful. But I’d be stuck with it in my own mind and in my own mouth cuz nobody understands me but me. If I can say something that makes sense and you got it and you feel it and you tell somebody else the same thing, that is when we have meaning, that’s when meaning becomes important in our lives. That’s when life becomes more meaningful. When you can share some knowledge that you have in a way that people can pick it up. So I’m very grateful for a lot of things.
And of course, when I was child I used to always wonder why old people say thank God for another day. I sued to think that was mundane and boring. Why you say thank God fro another day, its gonna be another day automatically. Well I’m a little older now, I know that the day is not to be taken for granted, so I have to say I am thankful for another day as well. I am grateful for just seeing the sun rise. I am grateful for little things, I am grateful for things now that I never dreamed I would be grateful for and I guess its because I’ve been here for a while.
You know after you’ve been here for a while, over 60 years, you will start to think about gratitude in another way. Plus it’s a value that seems to be kicked to the curb a lot. A lot of folks are not showing there thanks for things. Hip-Hop has kinda ushered in a kinda sloppy attitude and culture. I mean you got your pants hanging down, you curse whenever you want to, you talk loud in places you should be quiet. So there’s a lot of lack of gratitude being shown by some of the younger generation and I think its avery important think to try an infuse some gratitude. Show some gratefulness because none of us have gotten here for how ever long we’re here without the help of somebody else. And whoever helped you and however you were helped, you need to be grateful.
And then on top of it, when I was tryina come up with a title for the CD, I called my mother who is 87 years old and she’s a church going woman, she’s about God and making sure that all her children worship God and pray and believe in God and all that. So I know my mothers philosophy, so I called up and she said I know you’re working on something with the family, what are you gonna call your new CD and I said “Gratitude”. And she “That’s nice”. And when she said that’s nice, the way she said it, the words she choice it was a wrap. I knew for sure, it could be nothing else. I had picked the golden chalice when I said “Gratitude”.
Beautiful. Now in terms of the Musical styles on the Album, where have you gone with it?
Well I wanted to connect with the young people. And that’s where my grandson came in. He came up with tracks that’s really do appeal to the young ears – that heavy Hip-Hop, Bass sound. But he’s also an old spirit, so he’s got music around those beats and that’s what appealed to me. The beats were cool, I like the rhythms, but the music of what he was creating was the thing that blew my mind cuz I didn’t expect that. You see for a whole year I would not even go to my Grandsons house because my son told me he had these tracks that were great and I said to Omar, man I’m not in to tracks, I want real instruments, I want bass I want drums I want a live piano player, I wanna see the sweat coming off of their faces – I’m not into these tracks. And so he (Omar) said ‘Pops Arendo’s tracks are really great –he’s great. So finally about a year later, me and my son went over to his house, and I heard that tracks and I was totally wiped out because the tracks – I could feel the tracks. And if I can feel it I can deal with it. And I can feel where he was coming from.
Matter of fact, one of the tracks that he played, my son picked out a poem that I was to read on the track. When he played the track, the track was almost like saying ‘You’re gonna have to sing me. You cant read no poem over top of me”, and so I turned that poem into a song on the spot – its called “Don’t Know What I’d Do Without You”. It’s a funky blues love song that anytime anybody hears it especially if they’re in a love zone, they get very excited about it, because its one of those loves songs that everybody can like and identify with if you’ve ever been in love with anybody. So it turned itself in to a song because his tracks were that lyrical and that melodious.
So I am very excited about the CD and his tracks because I watch the people respond to them. I mean, the first cut “Rain”, for example – I had written a piece about rain and I compared the rain, the lightning and the Thunder to my mother and father, it’s the first poem I have ever done that is a dedication to my mother and father. And his track just made sense to go with the rain. t happens to be the first piece on the album. I don’t know who’s gonna be affected by any of this I hope everyone will be, but I had a young boy who’s deep into Hip-Hop, he’s tryina get some stuff out himself as a Hi-Hop artist. His mother said that when he first heard it he cried, it brought tears to his eyes.
So if it penetrates like that, and if it penetrates the young people like that, that is a perfect formula for me. Primarily because I still work with young people, I’m still teaching, I try to stay connected. It keeps yje young person alive in myself So I never wanna detach myself from the young folks. So I think this is a great intergenerational connection. We’re talking about two generations behind me, coming together to do something today and I don’t think you’re gonna find to much of that happening on the planet.
That leads me on to my next two questions. The first one being, its interesting that you are considered one of the forerunners to Rap. How does it feel to you, 2 generations later, to be releasing an album with your words, primarily using the music form that you inspired and help to create?
Oh that’s wonderful, Its Amazing it’s a gift, its something else to be grateful for. The fact that I have been hear long enough to combine my talents with the talents of 2 generations behind me and connect with the kids who could be my Grand kids and who are my Grand kids. That’s a real personal thrill I can’t even describe or pass on to anybody else. Its like I’m having a chance to be the man at the party. And that really makes me feel very good because, I watch the faces of the young people when they hear it and how exciting they get and I some grateful that they appreciate the lyrics that I kick.
I mean people hear “Harlem”, they get very excited and I know Harlem aint nothing but a history lesson. I’m really just dropping information about Harlem that a lot of people don’t even know. But I’m doing it deliberately because I want people to recognise the place That I have a great deal of love for. This is where I got started running off at the mouth.
I got started really in Harlem when I was 10 years old when I really think about it because my folks used to come here and go to church in Harlem every Sunday. And my mother put my name on the list to read the Lords Prayer at Easter Sunday when I was 10. And never made that connection before, but the church was in Harlem. My mother made me learn how to recite the Lords Prayer in the basement of our house in Queens New York and she wanted to hear me upstairs in the Kitchen. So that’s when I start developing a big mouth, it was because of my mother.
My mother was not gonna let me yell the Lords Prayer. That was out. I was tryina figure out what she was doing “I wann hear you do the Lords Prayer dwon hear in the basement”. And I started to yell the Lords Prayer, she said “Don’t you yell the Lords Prayer or I’ll come down there for you. Don’t be stupid”. And I’m saying “ well how in the world am I gonna say it for you to hear me upstairs”. And she said, you got a big mouth, you gone put the air in your stomach, then you let it go. You fill your stomach up with air and you project. All you gotta do is just project.” And that was my first vocal coach.
And the day that I went o that church when I was 10 years old and Reverend Wilson, That was the name of the Pastor, he said “Now we’re gonna have Sister Davis’ son do the Lords Prayer. And church start saying “Amen- Praise the Lord”. And he took a microphone, he put the microphone in front of the pulpit and my mother jumped up and snatch that microphone and said “He don’t need no mic”. …. And the rest is history.
In terms of your own creative process from 50 years ago til now, how has your creative process evolved?
Well, when I first starting writing poetry it was primarily to win the hearts of older girls. I always like older girls. If I was 14, my girl friend had to be 16 – I lied about my age. I didn’t like girls my age, so if I wrote a poem I though that that would kinda catch your attention. It seemed to work a little bit.
And then one day I got real kinda cute with my English teacher, cuz every week she’d give us 10 vocabulary words to put in a composition. And so when Ms. Carpenter my English teacher gave me these vocabulary words, I was like 15 I think. I said to her in class, I was probably just showing off – “If I can put these words in a poem could I get extra credit?” She look at the words and she looked at me and says “If you can put all these words in a coherent poem, I’ll give you 2 extra credits.” So I said alright.
I took the words and I was having a relationship with this young lady who was about maybe 3 years older than me and it wasn’t going to well, so I called the poem “Emancipation”. Of course you can imagine that was one of the vocabulary words. Then I went on to talk about… Well what did I say – I said:
She’s a rose of many thorns tearing pride out of my heart
Though she blossoms in many forms, her thorns remain always sharp
She rips, she hurts, yet stays projecting seductively fragrant perfumes
I protest in so many ways by my manhood she somehow consumes
I’m torn between love and masculinity, and the latter I need the most
Her life from mine a separate entity, I’m a man this I can not boast
She more woman than I a man, knows not her place by me
She thinks me a cactus living in sand, closing her ears to my plea
Let me free to roam in your garden, Let me free to pride in your perfume
For the love I feel will soon be pardoned by the manhood I must quickly resume.
Now of course I remember that poem because I’ve told this story before, and my memory’s pretty good. And the fact is that that poem got me the extra credit and m teacher told me when I handed it to her, she said “You’re gonna get your double credits. But I want you to know something – you’re a poet. And don’t know what you’re gonna do with that, but you are a poet. This is phenomenal. I‘ve enever read any students work like this before in all the years I been teaching.”
So she encouraged me. I started writing a little bit more poetry, it just became like a hobby. And then when they killed Dr. King, in 1968 April 4th, my poetry took a complete change. I became really very very rebellious in my work. I stopped writing love poems, I stopped writing poems that were just strictly about me, or girls or whatever. The first poem I wrote around that period was called Wall Street Journal, I wrote about how they were gonna make buttons and pins and posters and make a lot of money off of the death of this great man. Nd I was very pissed off about it. Wall Street Journal became the establishment, it became the system and I was throwing bombs at it. That was the 1st conscious poem I wrote.
Then when the Last Poets were getting ready to get started, I was totally intimidated because I really had not been known as a revolutionary poet. David Nelson who was one of the other member who started the group with me, we had both been sharing some of our little love poems we’d been writing and he told me that he had put our names on a list to read poetry May 19th 1968 at Mount Morris Park, which has been renamed Marcus Garvey Park. It was a very popular park where cultural and revolutionary activities took place. So here I am gonna read poetry in Harlem, on Malcolm X’s Birthday, I didn’t know anything at all about Malcolm, I knew he was a great man because my teachers spoke about him. I never really got a chance to hear him speak or see him, but I did know that he was a force.
And I knew also that Harlem was a force because I love Harlem and you could feel the force of Harlem and I was really intimidated by Harlem. Harlem was Black unapologetically. I mean it was like, this is a real Black place and you needed to watch your black self if you was in Harlem. I didn’t wanna come to Harlem and be booed off the stage. So I got really intimidated thinking that I’ma go up on stage in Harlem, what in the world am I gonna do to make those people appreciate me. So what I did was, and looking back on it it was probably the smartest thing I could do, I came to Harlem about 2-3 weeks before the 19th May. I walked around, I listened to the people talk and I just tried to get an idea, get the rhythm, get the flava of the folks in Harlem. And there was an expression I heard a lot it was “What is your thing, what’s your thing brother, what’s your thing”. And everybody would say Whats Your thing and somebody would say I’m a Black Panther or I’m a Black Muslim, everybody had a thing. And “thing” was the common pronoun that was being used to describe what part did you play in The Movement. And it kinda coincided with the song that was out by the Isley Brothers at the time, called “Its Your Thing – do what you wanna do”. So “Thing” became a very important thing. So I took that thing and wrote a poem called “What is Your Thing” Brother, will it save Black women and children, will it build a Black nation, will it make Black men love Black women more. What is your thing Brother?”
Poetically it was horrible, but it was a slogan type piece dealing with the line that I got from the people, which is the smartest way to go. And that was the very very first poem that I read and performed as a revolutionary poet in front of a crowd. And I am sure that they gave me love because of my dramatic interpretation and my voice, because the poem itself really didn’t have that much merit poetically as far as I’m concerned, not considering I’ve grown tremendously since then. But that was the beginning.
Then it was about being under the tutelage of people, reading and listening to people like Amiri Baraka and Askia. And then Gylan Kain, who was another member of the group was another person who without question gave us our aesthetic. He was a tremendous poet when I first met him, I don’t know how he got started, I don’t know when he got started but he was a great poet. And knew that his work just knocked me out the box and it blew my mind.
So I learned a great deal from the people that I was with and David Nelson, he had some excellent poetry aswell, he had some really good poetry, but Kain was the one that I kinda really considered to be the lead poet in the group. But I was always a good student, I learned quickly and I applied what I learned quickly to the point where I became really very strong. And I became very popular in the group. It also started a little ego problem because, if you’re considered to be the top dog of a group and then somebody in the group that’s not considered on the same level as you becomes a little bit more recognized, that could be a problem.
But I was getting better, and it got to the point where I was able to master my craft. You know I still think there’s more that can be done, but I’m at a good point in my life now and I’m probably right now, you know, I don’t know what I cant do right now. I’m at that point where I’ve learned the real secret to being good at your craft. If you’ve been a teacher and you’ve been a good teacher for years, then the best way to really master your craft is to start listening to the stuff that you’ve shared with others that has made them good.
So I’ve been listening to myself, I’ve been taking my own medicine and that’s has made a tremendous difference. There’s nothing I cant write right now. If someone gave me an assignment to write about a bed bug at the root of a tree, I could write about that. Whatever theme anybody gives me now I can turn it into a poem and I developed that skill because of all the lessons I have given others in writing.
So in terms of what is on the album in terms of poetry is that mostly newly written stuff or is it a mixture of old an new?
Mostly new, everything on that album is written I’d say within the last 2, 3 years at the most. I had a older piece about Harlem, when I did a play some years ago that was a response to “For Colored Girls”. There was a play called “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enough” and it was a very popular play here in New York. It was a play that really kinda castrated a lot of Black men, made Black men look like they weren’t taking care of business and not really worthy of anything, and so I didn’t like it. So Ntozake, the young lady that wrote it, she said that Harlem was a woman screaming on a fire escape o something, and she didn’t give Harlem a good look, she made Harlem sound like it was a raggedy-anne and didn’t have the juice that it has and I didn’t like that, cuz I like Harlem, Harlem is a special place. It a very special place an it has always been.
So I wrote a poem about Harlem back then and I did my play. And it was a very beautiful poem and it was a great production the whole production was successful beyond my imagination.
Then I have open houses at my house every Sunday and I have poets come through, I’m tryina nurture a bunch of young poets. I’ve had people like Saul Williams and Jessica Care Moore come through here. Its been a very interesting thing, members of the Wu Tang Clan used to come all the time. So I’m still doing that, every Sunday I cook food and have folks over. So I had one of the men who was in my house, I had written a poem about Brooklyn and that’s on the album as well. Cuz I like Brooklyn, I’ve always liked Brooklyn. Brooklyn has always been the funkiest part of the city. Its always had the muscle, you know, you don’t mess around when you go to Brooklyn Brothers and Sister in Brooklyn don’t play. Serious – they’ll punch you in the mouth. So I love Brooklyn.
You got 2million Black people that live in Brooklyn. I mean there is no 1/5th of any place in the country that can claim they have 2milion people and Brooklyn is only 1/5th of New York City. At the same time Brooklyn is without question a very hot spot. So I wrote about Brooklyn and played for my kids I went to Brooklyn I was teaching in a school there and they wanted to here it everyday. So I played it here and one of the guys here said “Man, you don’t live in Brooklyn, you live in Harlem, you gotta write a pecie.”. I said I’ve written a piece about Harlem, what are you talking about. So he challenged me to write something new, so I wrote a piece about Harlem that’s relatively new, I wrote that just to shut somebody up, because they swear they love Harlem more than any other place, I wanted to let them know tha I knew Harlem better than this person did. So I went IN. (Laugh).
Then I did a piece dedicated to my spirit, I’ve never written a poem or a song dedicated to my spirit. “Soft as a breeze quiet like snow”, and I remember my lady telling me she says, yeh you really are a poet, only a poet would say something like that – “quiet like snow”. And yes the snow is quiet. You go to bed one night and it snows on the ground, you wake up there’s a bunch of snow and you didn’t hear nothing. And it’s got a strong impact on how we all function during the day.
Then we talking about the piece that I turned into a song – “Don’t Know What I’d Do Without You” . Classic! I have it as a poem done with a viola, a young lady playing a Viola and me reciting it but then when I heard the tracks that my grandson rendered I had to sing it. So it’s a song and a poem. And that’s interesting and that’s also a wonderful thing.
Then the piece that my kids took from me – “Where We began”. I appreciated the fact that they love it, But I did not appreciate the fact that they took it from me. But after hearing it I have no choice but to admit that they did a splendid job. And my son is actually reciting the poem. And you’ll hear me if you listen, you’ll hear me waaaaaaaay in the back ground, I’m in the Rosa Parks section of the bus. Every now and then you’ll hear me say a couple a lil things. But that’s the only presence I have on tha particular track. But its OK as I said this is a family project.
And then we have “A Poem”, which my son says is a spanking to all poets in the world because we have so many people who wanna be poets now because that’s become a popular thing to do. But a lot of people should not be poets cuz they don’t know how to write poetry.
You have some people that write books, and they think they’re writing poems, but they’re writing essays. They’re just talking jibberish and they’re not using any of the poetic tools. Poetry does have rules, it’s a free form of writing but still freedom really is a responsibility. You have to be responsible to the genre that is poetry. Some people do not adhere to the rules. So the poem and I aptly name it “The Poem” because there’s nothing else to call it. It’s a A Poem. And it covers all the emotions and angles and attitudes and aspects of poetry. I always teach that poetry must be something that we can see, taste, smell, touch or hear. You’ve got to activate my senses. So my imagination will go to work. If that doesn’t happen then you’re not really connecting. If you’re giving me something strictly for an intellectually discourse, it’s not poetic.
Then I deal with “What I Want to See”. That particular piece is important because of the fact that I wanna see changes. I’ve seen ugliness, I’ve seen the bitter bitter, I’ve seen the stuff that’s not exactly pleasing to the eye. I would like to see something that’s wholesome, just like we’re talking about whole foods, people got whole food resturants all over the world, eat whole foods, make sure that you have something nutritional in you body. We need to have something nutrional outside of our body. We need to look at each other in holistic way. We need to be holistically related to one and other as opposed to being adversaries and making life miserable just because I don’t like the way you look.. I mean so there’s a holistic attitude that need to take place. And I remember back in the days a brother was telling me, as a revolutionary we always know what we don’t like, and what we’d like to blow up and what we’d like to tear down. But do we know what we ant to build? So ‘What I Want To See’ is an example of that.”
And what else I on the album? Its chuck full with a lot of good stuff. Oh “Praise The Lord”, Praise The Lord is a major piece on there. Praise The Lord is about the religious aspect. I had a lecture at the University of Mississippi, and I asked the professor there before I went I called her and I asked he “whats happening done there in Mississippi?” and she said “You know this is praise the lord country”. So when she said that, that was my cue – I said I’ma write a poem called ‘Praise The Lord’ and so I did. Abnd my concept of praising the Lord is just like the very first line in that particular poem where I say you take the P off of praise, you get raise. And that’s what we must do, raise the Lord that’s in us. And then I go from there and say call on Jesus, call on Buda, Call on Jahovia, Yahweh, call on whatever. You can call him Ooga Booga. It don’t matter who and what you call him, its just a force of nature. So I’m giving my philosophy, my interpretation of spirituality of people.
We put them in the boxes and we worship by the boxes that we name them by. And you cant touch my box and your box is not as big and as important as my box and so we have these box wars with religion. And I think its very silly. Because if you believe in God and this person believes in God, but you don’t call him by the same name, so what? The main thing is that you don’t use your God to kill me and I’m not gonna use my God to kill you. If we ever get to that pint then we’ll have a real Human race. But right now we got some heathens and we got madness because don’t believe in that. Everybody got their own beliefs and they think their beliefs is more important that anyone else’s. And its really childish behaviour as far as I’m concerned. SoI wanted to kill that by doing ‘Praise The Lord’ and talk about what I think praising the Lord is which is being good to yourself and every living thing around you. I mention this in that particular piece beautifully.
And laced with all of what I’m saying are my kids. My daughter is laws voice is there, she’s got the voice of an angel. My son in Law is there and my son. So I’ve got these voices that re special, that supporting the effort by enhancing what I’m saying. And it was just a very exciting project because it came out tastefully and yet it got that nice lil Hip-Hop bounce to it and at the same time the substance of my many years on this planet were not betrayed.
On the Kickstater Campaign, how did you get into that? And maybe a bit of a controversial question, but in terms of artists especially those coming out of The Movement, a lot of artists struggled to financially or economically sustain themselves because of their message. So when it comes to past generations of activists and artists, were there mistakes that were made, or did you just see that as a part of the obstacles of the time that you have to get over?
Well you know, first of all as an artist I must say this to all the listening artists. Get a Job. You gotta work, I’m sorry, just being artist is not gonna work. I have to say it. Unless your gonna be one of them artists that can demand a big fee right of the bat and that can pay your bills and you don’t have to worry about it. If you got that kinda play, right on and more power to you.
But if you’re just a regular artist like most of us are, and I’m considered really a regular artist, the Last Poets are more mythical than real in terms of what we bring to the table. Theres no Last Poets bank, I don’t have no Last Poets Money Tree, I have to work hard. So my job, my vocation is working as a teacher and I do have a lot of passion for that. I love teaching. I eaven try to tell people, when you hire The Last Poets to do a gig, also hook us up with a workshop so we can try to impart some stuff on some young folks who wanna write. That makes a difference. The teaching piece is very important to me.
And then I hire myself out as a consultant for different art education agencies as well I do workshops in colleges all over the country. And its been a very exciting journey. But you better work, and that’s the Bottom line.
I mean I cant really cry and sympathise with any poor artist, you aint working, your not out here grinding and your but is poor your talking bout you’re and artist you better find something else to do. Learn how to cook, learn how to sew , learn how to do something other than just sing a song or write a poem. We have to do a litlle bit more multi-tasking. We are in a world that requires that you have more than one skill, people don’t give you points for just being gifted in one area. You have to have a bunch of things going on.
So I will work and I’m not afraid to work. I’m happy to get jobs and I am very happy to be known as a very good teacher, that’s one of the things that has saved me. My partner loves to get on stage and tell people, “well see I don’t have a job teaching like Abiodun and Babatunde, they both work, but I’m just a poet”. And sometimes I could kick him off the stage when he’s says that, I hate him to say that, especially considering I know that this man is a Class A chef, and work in any restaurant in te world if he wanted to because he has skills like that. But he gonna become this just total poet, and do nothing else but run around an be a renaissance potentate. Well that’s fine, but that does not pay the bills.
We’re living in this world in 2014 or even 2020, there’s gonna be work required to get some cheddar, some money to pay the bills. Bills are not gonna go away, they’re not gonna ever have a moratorium on paying bills. Bills are a part of the system that we live in until we change the system. And in order to have the money to pay the bills you gotta have a job one way or another. Its best to have a job that’s something you can do and get paid for.
Now the one advantage that people like me do have is yes I can sell a poem to a magazine or sell a poem to an education department and they’ll print it up. Like I have a poem that’s been published 18 different times by 18 different agencies and its called “Another Mountain”, and every time they get it, they reprint the poem they get in touch with me, they send me a form I have to fill it out and then they send me a fat check. And that fat check has grown every single time people wanna reprint the poem. I don’t know why they wanna reprint another mountain all the time like it’s the greatest poem I ever wrote, but they wanna see it like that, fine – pay me. That’s all that counts at this point. And then I realise that its being printed in 35 thousand copies of a reader that they’re gonna give it to the children in schools, so I have no qualms asking for 25 hundred dollars for just one poem.
So there are ways that you as an artist can still get paid but you have to hustle and to grind. Its not gonna come easy And all of us artists, especially us poets seem to struggle with the idea cuz you know, being poet is a very very romantic thing;. “Oh he was a poet, and he lived the life of a poet. And he saw through the eyes of a poet. And he saw the trees and flowers. And he flung rock in the middle of the day and if the sun set he would look at the sun that day and he would imagine, he would dream. And he didn’t have no house and he didn’t have no place to stay. And he ahd to borrow money to catch the subway and the bus” – its pitiful. And nobody is going to respect this romanticism. He’s suffering, he’s an outpatient and he has to correct that by working and having something that he can bring money in. Its not easy, but it’s a mandatory thing if were gonna be here.
Lastly, with your legacy as an Activist and as poet, what many would class as a Revolutionary Poet. The Last Poets were born in 1968 and that’s like the heat of the Movement right there. Since then, the movement has taken various twists and turns, its declined its come back again. How has the evolution of The Movement affected you as an artist and as a Poet?
My thing is to be consistent. I am not gonna change because the system seems to have all these different trends. We live in a very trendy world, people jump on thing. Like we have this trend and I honestly believe that this Homosexual thing is a big trend. I think theres a whole lotaa people who are just acting like homosexuals because it’s a hip thing to do right now. It seems to be the in thing to do and of course of you smack a gay person you might go to jail like you just smacked God. And so a lot of people are into that because there’s so many insecure people on the planet.
See what Movements do, is they kinda give the regular people who are not even involved in the movement some values. It helps set up a system that allows us to see which way to go. How we’re gonna guide our lives and govern our steps, even though we may not be in the movement. We may not follow the love angle of a Martin Luther King or the Self Determination angle of a Malcolm X, but we’re gonna give it more thought because these guys are in our face, they’re preaching, they’re talking bout it. And the movements alive, threes a bunch of followers, there’s a bunch of people marching with this philosophy, with this understanding.
And so people that are not even marching, who are sitting home watching television are affected by it. But when you don’t have that type of vision on the television or in the papers, or you don’t know anything going on that’s about trying to make people more conscious and relevant and aware of what the problems are, and you see the outbreaks of the problems of the Michael Browns being shot down and the Eric Gardners being strangled to death in broad day light and everybody can see this cold blooded murder. But there’s no movement to cover for that, to redeem that. So the people march and they go through changes.
So as a poet, as a Revolutionary Poet somebody who came up in the heated 60’s My job is to keep doing what I have always done. Cause I still believe if we work together, show each other love, if you unify as a race, we will not go through a lot of the changes that we go through if we are unified.
We always like to say that the White Man divides and conquers, he doesn’t do anything of the sort. And Sam Greenlee is the one that gets credit for this remark – he does not divide and conquer, he conquers the divided. And we are divided, in more ways than one. We got Jamaicans who don’t like Nigerians, we got people who live in Brooklyn who don’t like the people who live in Harlem, we got people who live around the corner who don’t lie the people who live across the street. We have to many issues among ourselves and then you’ve got people who are capitalizing off of these issues. Who know that we don’t like each other. We know we got the Crips & and the Bloods, even if you aint in that gang, we got these gang concepts where she think she greater than me, he thinks he bad. We get down on each other to easily, we don’t share the love and it’s the love that has sustained us.
So my thing is because I still have an undying love for my people. I had it the beginning, I was totally ripped over when they killed Dr. King, I still have that same feeling that it was wrong, it was an insult it was an offence. And the only answer to that is for us to come together and be strong, to be self determined, to build something that we can be proud of. To secure the lives of those who we care about and of course ourselves and those around us. And that’s been my mission. So consistency is the only answer that I see to these problems.
…………………….
Click Here for the British Blacklist Preview
Please Support the release of “Gratitude” by Abiodun Oyewale by going to:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/643963950/gratitude-album-release
For more information on Darkling Productions visit: http://www.darkling.tv/
I’m so happy you got to meet one of your idols and inspirations ShakaRa. I hope one day someone has as much pleasure interviewing you, as you had interviewing Abiodun Oyewole. This really is a fantastic & formidable write up – you really have put the work in with this one!