{"product_id":"africanism","title":"Africanism","description":"\u003cp\u003e\"This is the time that we, who have benefitted from the Last Poets should\nbe able to say, 'it's the Last Poets. It's them we should be honouring,\nbecause we did not honour them for so many years_\"\nKRS One wasn't just addressing the hip hop fraternity when he uttered\nthose words by way of introducing the video for Invocation - a poem\nwritten thirty years ago, around the time of the Last Poets' last significant\ncomeback. He was speaking to everyone who's been affected by the\nword, sound and power issuing from the most revolutionary poetry ever\nwitnessed, and that the Last Poets had introduced to the world outside of\nHarlem at the dawn of the seventies.\nIn 2018 the two remaining Last Poets, Abiodun Oyewole and Umar Bin\nHassan, embarked on another memorable return with an album -\nUnderstand What Black Is - that earned favourable comparison with their\nseminal works of the past, whilst showcasing their undimmed passion and\nlyrical brilliance in an entirely new setting - that of reggae music. Tracks\nlike Rain Of Terror (\"America is a terrorist\") and How Many Bullets\ndemonstrated that they'd lost none of their fire or anger, and their\nessential raison d'etre remained the same.\n\"The Last Poets' mission was to pull the people out of the rubble o f their\nlives,\" wrote their biographer Kim Green. \"They knew, deep down that\npoetry could save the people - that if black people could see and hear\nthemselves and their struggles through the spoken word, they would be\nmoved to change.\"\nSeveral years later and the follow-up is now with us. The project started\nwhen Tony Allen, the Nigerian master drummer whose unique\npolyrhythms had driven much of Fela Kuti's best work, dropped by Prince\nFatty's Brighton studio and laid down a selection of drum patterns to die\nfor. That was back in 2019, but then the pandemic struck. Once it had\npassed, the label booked a studio in Brooklyn, where the two Poets voiced\nfour tracks apiece and breathed fresh energy, fire and outrage into some\nof the most enduring landmarks of their career. Abiodun, who was one of\nthe original Last Poets who'd gathered in East Harlem's Mount Morris Park\nto celebrate Malcolm X's birthday in May 1968, chose four poems that\nfirst appeared on the group's 1970 debut album, called simply The Last\nPoets. He'd written When The Revolution Comes aged twenty, whilst living\nin Jamaica, Queens. \"We were getting ready for a revolution,\" he told\nGreen. \"There wasn't any question about whether there was going to be\none or not. The truth was many of us still saw ourselves as \"niggers\" and\n\nslaves. This was a mindset that had to change if there was ever to be\nBlack Power.\"\nHe and writer Amiri Baraka were deep in conversation one day when\nBaraka became distracted by a pretty girl walking by. \"You're a gash\nman,\" Abiodun told him. The poem inspired by that incident, Gash Man, is\nrevisited on the new album, and exposes the heartless nature of sexual\nacts shorn of intimacy or affection. \"Instead of the vagina being the\nentrance to heaven,\" he says, \"it too often becomes a gash, an injury, a\nwound_\"\nTwo Little Boys meanwhile, was inspired after seeing two young boys\naged around 11 or 12 \"stuffing chicken and cornbread down their\ntasteless mouths, trying to revive shrinking lungs and a wasted mind.\"\nThey'd walked into Sylvia's soul food restaurant in Harlem, ordered big\nmeals, then bolted them down and run out the door. No one chased after\nthem, knowing that they probably hadn't eaten in days. Fifty years later\nand children are still going hungry in major cities across America and\nelsewhere. Abiodun's poem hasn't lost any relevance at all, and neither\nhas New York, New York, The Big Apple. \"Although this was written in\n1968, New York hasn't changed a bit,\" he admits, except \"today, people\njust mistake her sickness for fashion.\"\nUmar is originally from Akron, Ohio, but had arrived in Harlem in early\n1969 after seeing Abiodun and the other Last Poets at a Black Arts\nFestival in Cleveland. That's where he first witnessed what Amiri Baraka\nonce called \"the rhythmic animation of word, poem, image as word-\nmusic\" - a creative force that redefined the concept of performance\npoetry and stripped it bare until it became a howl of rage, hurt and anger,\nsaved from destruction by mockery and love for humanity. When Umar's\nfather, who was a musician, was jailed for armed robbery he took to the\nstreets from an early age where he shined shoes and raised whatever\nmoney he could to help feed his eight brothers and sisters. By the time he\nsaw the Last Poets he'd joined the Black United Front and was ready to\njoin the struggle.\nOnce in Harlem, Abiodun asked him what he'd learnt in the few weeks\nsince he'd got there. \"Niggers are scared of revolution,\" Umar replied.\n\"Write it down\" urged Abiodun. That poem still gives off searing heat\nmore than fifty years later. In Umar's own words, \"it became a prayer, a\ncall to arms, a spiritual pond to bathe and cleanse in because niggers are\nnot just vile and disgusting and shiftless. Niggers are human beings lost\nin someone else's system of values and morals.\"\nAnd there you have it. It's not just race or religion that hold us back, but\nan economic system that keeps millions in poverty and living in fear - a\nsystem born from political choice and that's now become so entrenched,\nso bloated on its own success that it's put mankind in mortal danger. It\nwas many black people's acceptance of the status quo that inspired Just\nBecause, which like Niggers Are Scared Of Revolution, was included on\n\nthat seminal first album. Along with their revolutionary rhetoric, it was the\nLast Poets' use of the \"n word\" that proved so shocking, but it would be\nwrong to suggest that they reclaimed it, since it never belonged to black\npeople in the first place. There's never any hiding place when it comes to\nthe Last Poets. They use words like weapons, and that force all who listen\nto decide who they are and where they stand.\nUmar's two remaining tracks find him revisiting poems first unleashed on\nthe Poets' second album This Is Madness! Abiodun had left for North\nCarolina by then where he became more deeply enmeshed in\nrevolutionary activities and spent almost four years in jail for armed\nrobbery after attempting to seize funds related to the Klu Klux Klan.\nMeanwhile, the 21 year old Umar was squatting in Brooklyn and had\ndeveloped close ties with the Dar-ul Islam Movement. A longing for purity\nand time-honoured spiritual values underpins Related to What, whilst This\nIs Madness is a call for freedom \"by any means necessary,\" and that\npaints a feverish landscape peopled by prominent black leaders but that\nquickly descends into chaos. \"All my dreams have been turned into\npsychedelic nightmares,\" he wails, over a groove now powered by Tony\nAllen's ferocious drumming.\nThose sessions lasted just two days, and we can only imagine the\natmosphere in that room as the hip hop godfathers exchanged the conga\ndrums of Harlem for the explosive sounds of authentic Afrobeat. Once\nthey'd finished, the recordings and momentum returned to Prince Fatty's\nstudio, since relocated from Brighton to SE London. This was stage three\nof the project, and who better to fill out the rhythm tracks than two key\nmusicians from Seun Anikulapo Kuti's band Egypt 80? Enter guitarist\nAkinola Adio Oyebola and bassist Kunle Justice, who upon hearing Allen's\ntrademark grooves exclaimed, \"oh, the Father_ we are home!\" Such joy\nand enthusiasm resulted in the perfect fusion of Nigerian Afrobeat and\nrevolutionary poetry, but the vision for the album wasn't yet complete. He\nwanted to create a new kind of soundscape - one that reunited the Poets\nwith the progressive jazz movement they'd once shared with musicians\nlike Sun Ra and Pharoah Sanders. It was at that point they recruited\nexciting jazz talents based in the UK like Joe Armon Jones from Mercury\nPrize winners Ezra Collective, also widely acclaimed producer\/remixer and\nkeyboard player Kaidi Tatham, who's been likened to Herbie Hancock, and\nBritish jazz legend Courtney Pine, whose genius on the saxophone and\ninfluence on the UK's now vibrant jazz scene is beyond question.\nThe instrumental tracks on Africanism are in many ways as revelatory and\nexciting as the Last Poets' own. It's important to remember that the\nkaleidoscope of styles and influences we're presented with here aren't the\nresult of sampling but were played \"live\" by musicians responding to\nsounds made by other musicians. That's where the magic comes from,\naided by Prince Fatty's peerless mixing which allows us to hear everything\nwith such clarity. Music fans today have grown accustomed to listening to\nall kinds of different genres. Their tastes have never been so broad or all-\n\nencompassing, and so the music on this new Last Poets' album is as\ngroundbreaking as their lyrics, and perfectly suited to the era that we're\nnow living in.\n\nJohn Masouri\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Africa Seven","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50906012516683,"sku":"2230259","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50923774640459,"sku":"2235040","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/test_13d2bd32_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1732862991","url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/de\/products\/africanism","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}