More revered than heard over their five-decade existence, the Last Poets are customarily cited as the progenitors of hip-hop. While there’s substantial truth to this, it both oversimplifies that story (hip-hop emerged as a culture in itself, which meshed with the kind of rapping pioneered by the Poets), and diminishes their own work: it marks them as a stepping stone, whose significance lies chiefly in their influence.
Yet their records are extraordinary. They have few peers in their inflammatory artistry, and in their melding of rhythm and language into a single, fluid entity. They began on the streets of Harlem. That, you’d imagine, meant playing to a tough crowd; 49 years on, they still know how to put on a gripping show out of next to nothing.
“They” is currently down to two key members of an ever-shifting collective: Abiodun Oyewole, who is tall, charismatic, wears a camouflage kufi and radiates gravitas; he dovetails with the flickering, mischievous wit of Umar Bin Hassan, whose words fly like sparks once he gets going. With their sole accompaniment the hand drums of Baba Donn Babatunde, they open by introducing all the members not present. “This group,” deadpans Oyewole, “has some history.”
They have a knockabout, almost vaudevillian rapport, and one thing they doubtless twigged early on is: if your performance pieces are heavily serious, add humour to the bits in between. Their pieces include more recent numbers such as Bin Hassan’s Forty Deuce Street – a masterful evocation of the New York he moved to in the 1960s – and Oyewole’s stinging Rain of Terror, which, among more verifiable charges, accuses the US government of developing Aids to inflict upon black people.
Then there’s the work that made their name: Hassan’s magnificent, terrifying, rococo This Is Madness, next to which Allen Ginsberg’s Howl feels as reserved as TS Eliot, and whose closing cry of “Please stop all this madness! Stop it!” doubtless echoes how many of us feel confronting the daily news. Niggers Are Scared of Revolution, which Oyewole describes as their anthem, makes a salty, scabrous finale.
In a happier world, the Last Poets’ big themes would be of only historical interest. That those themes feel current is an indictment of the times; that the group’s work feels so alive is testimony to their bravura as performers.
