Pieces Of A Man

In 1971, Gil Scott-Heron observed the gradual demise of a man in his neighborhood who was driven over the brink after being let go from his job without warning. What came of Scott-Heron bearing witness to that unraveling is “Pieces of a Man.” For the song, Scott-Heron replaced the neighbor with a fictitious account of his own father: Before this downward spiral, he appears to be a decent person with a solid grip on life. As the story progresses, different encounters with the man suggest that he’s wearing thin from misfortune. Scott-Heron’s melodies grow more and more agonizing as he watches his father, his neighbor, his fellow man become a shell of their former selves.

Twenty-six years after the song was written, New York City hip-hop renaissance man Bobbito Garcia interviewed Scott-Heron at his apartment for Vibe. Discussing a few standouts from his catalog, Scott-Heron, 47 years old at the time, said that he listened to “Pieces of a Man” every morning in order to clear his mind. He elaborated on the ritual: “Everywhere I’ve traveled, [people outside the U.S.] are concerned about Black Americans cause we’re still not welcome in the U.S. and we’re still here—standing. I put that in my music. You’re living where people obstacle everything you do. So if a man survives and comes back the next morning, then God bless, brother, and good morning to you.”

The album that song belonged to, 1971’s Pieces of a Man, was Scott-Heron’s first go at championing that resilience through music. The year before, he released Small Talk at 125th and Lenox, a live poetry album featuring congas and some sparse singing. It housed the original spoken-word version of his most well-known song, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” where, through a staggering number of 1960s pop-culture references, he cautioned fellow Black Americans that sitting idle and settling for scraps wasn’t gonna bring about any meaningful change.

Small Talk also called out Black people who thought their fashionable displays of Afrocentrism gave them license to look down on “common folk.” It comically lamented the U.S. government for pumping millions into a moon landing instead of the well-being of its Black population. And it gave Scott-Heron the space to express that no level of liberal outlook from white people would wipe away their centuries of wrongdoing—or his right to be angry. Its power rested in Scott-Heron’s candid criticism of his country and the frustration of realizing that change was hard to come by. Pieces of a Man shares this urgent appraisal of the Black experience, but it draws mainly on pain and sorrow rather than rage.   Source: PItchfork