Youtube revolutionaries

By Hazel Sheffield

The comedian Reginald D. Hunter appeared halfway down the bill at a recent event held in honour of Gil Scott-Heron, who died nearly five years ago. “I grew up with that generation that was young with him,” he told an audience at the Roundhouse in London. “My sister told me about this song.” Behind him, Dave Okumu, a producer and musician in the British electro-pop act The Invisible, started up the band with the bopping bass line of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Clutching several sheaves of white paper in trembling hands, Hunter delivered Scott-Heron’s furious lines about Nixon, civil rights and consumerism over the song’s much-sampled drum pattern.

They were performing in “Pieces of a Man: the Gil-Scott Heron Project” at the Convergence festival, which brings music, visual arts and technology together in venues around London. In light of the controversy surrounding this year’s Brit Awards, which was criticised for failing to nominate any black British artists, the tribute felt well-timed. But it’s been in the works for a while. Glenn Max, the curator of Convergence, approached Okumu about organising the event two years ago.