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0:17

Welcome back to the World Cafe. I'm

0:19

Reina Durris, joined by John Morrison. John Morrison

0:22

is a podcast host and the host of

0:24

CultureSifer Radio on WXPN in Philadelphia, where we

0:26

make World Cafe. Every month he joins me

0:28

for the Culture Corner. He connects the dots

0:31

for us across all different genres of music.

0:33

John, what's up? How's it going? I'm

0:35

good, Reina. How are you? I'm great. Happy to

0:38

see you. What have you brought

0:40

for us today? Yeah, today

0:42

I wanted to talk about

0:45

one of my all-time favorite records.

0:47

This album is Gil Scott Herron

0:49

and Bryan Jackson's Winner in America.

0:51

It was released in 1974, so

0:53

it actually turns 50 this month.

0:58

And it's such a beautiful somber

1:01

and poignant record. Bryan

1:04

Jackson's arrangements are beautiful. And

1:07

Gil Scott Herron, of course, being a poet

1:10

and the singer and songwriter that

1:12

he was, a lot of the

1:15

topical material is so relevant

1:17

today. I thought that there was a lot

1:20

in this record that we could dig into.

1:23

Looking far away. Out

1:34

of this confusion. I'm

1:42

looking for a sign. So

1:49

you talked about the poetry

1:51

of Gil Scott Herron. Talk about

1:53

the lyrics. What are some of the themes that he's

1:55

tackling here? Yeah, this

1:57

record is so rich and...

1:59

and ambitious lyrically. Like

2:02

a lot of his work, it's overtly

2:04

political. But the way

2:06

he talks about politics, he

2:09

kind of balances the

2:11

micro personal

2:15

politic with the macro

2:17

systemic stuff. And you

2:19

get a feeling that the two

2:22

are deeply intertwined and

2:24

really inseparable. You

2:26

have Gil Scott narrating

2:29

these personal stories

2:31

about addiction and loneliness. But then

2:33

he has a song like H20

2:35

Gate Blues, where he's talking about

2:38

Watergate and racism and war. He's

2:41

wrestling with a whole lot lyrically

2:44

throughout this record. We're going

2:46

to hear the song Back Home. Could

2:48

you tell us a bit about this song before we hear it? Yeah,

2:51

Back Home is an interesting song,

2:54

because Gil is talking about how

2:56

he longs for home. But you

2:58

get the sense that it's home

3:00

in a broader sense. It really,

3:02

to me, reads like a

3:04

black man in the 70s living in

3:08

the city, but longing for

3:10

southern life. Gil Scott

3:12

Herron was born in Chicago. But

3:15

a lot of black folks from Chicago, his

3:17

mom is from Mississippi.

3:19

A lot of folks during the

3:21

Great Migration went directly from Mississippi

3:24

to Chicago. So there's always that

3:28

historical cultural link. But

3:30

Gil Scott Herron's father was Jamaican. So

3:33

you have the Great Migration and

3:36

immigration embodied in his

3:38

family. And when you think about black

3:41

folks during the Great Migration leaving the

3:43

South and coming North, and you think

3:45

about, on the

3:48

other hand, immigrants leaving where they're from

3:50

and coming to America, you get this

3:52

sense that folks are leaving

3:54

for greener pastures, quote unquote.

3:57

But Back Home isn't really that.

4:00

It's kind of like a flip

4:02

on that dynamic where you have someone who's

4:04

living in the city and looking

4:06

back at the South and looking back at

4:08

where their family is from and

4:10

kind of longing for it. And you get a

4:12

broader sense that there's a deeper

4:16

kind of dissatisfaction in that

4:19

emotion that he's bringing out in these lyrics.

4:21

Yeah, like back home is a more complicated

4:23

thing than it might seem like on the

4:25

surface. So

4:28

Scott Herron and Brian Jackson, this is Back

4:30

Home on World

4:54

Cafe. You

5:03

just heard Gil Scott Herron and Brian Jackson

5:06

with Back Home from the album Winter in

5:08

America turning 50 years old this month. John

5:10

Morrison is here for the Culture Corner to talk about

5:12

it. I'm Raina Durris. John, earlier

5:14

you said that Gil Scott Herron is

5:17

wrestling with some personal themes throughout the

5:19

album as well as sort of bigger themes like

5:21

politics and racism. What can he tell us about The

5:23

Bottle? Yeah,

5:25

The Bottle might be the most

5:27

well-known song on this

5:29

album. It's a

5:31

song about alcoholism and Gil

5:34

Scott Herron had, it feels

5:36

weird to say a knack, but he had

5:38

like an aptitude for

5:40

writing about addiction. So

5:43

he has The Bottle, he has the

5:45

song Angel Dust, Home is

5:47

Where the Hatred is, a

5:49

beautiful heart-breaking song about drug

5:51

addiction. And The

5:54

Bottle is right up there amongst

5:56

his best. About

6:00

how alcoholism. Have

6:03

sex in and hurts the

6:05

addicted person He talks about

6:07

how ah, That.

6:10

Addiction and net debt disease kind

6:12

of bleeds into the person's family

6:14

and then the broader community around

6:16

them eyes. It is a beautiful

6:19

song in it is really a

6:21

high artistic achievement or to be

6:23

able to talk about addiction in

6:25

the wait. He does. That.

6:27

Really a great sign. This is the bottom deals

6:30

got here and and brain Jackson this is Ron

6:32

Have mag. He

7:15

deserves a bottle. I go round and

7:17

round Jacks and. From the album

7:20

Winter and America which is released by

7:22

the decades ago this month for the

7:24

Cancer Corner, John Morrison is here today

7:26

on World Cafe with me Rain interest

7:28

so. There's. A song that Gills got

7:30

here and and Brian Jackson recorded around this time

7:32

the didn't make it onto the album. That is

7:34

still key to understanding the message that they were

7:37

trying to convey an interesting the it's the Selling

7:39

that is the same title as the album looking

7:41

to tell us about. Winter. in america

7:43

years is funny for some reason

7:46

the studio version of the song

7:48

winter and america is not on

7:50

the album are they at his

7:52

odds of gorgeous live version later

7:55

and like later additions of the

7:57

record but the studio one his

7:59

mouth on this

8:01

album. It's a

8:03

heavy somber song that's really about a

8:07

nation in decay. If you listen

8:09

to what he's saying, it's not

8:12

about infrastructure or nothing like

8:14

that, but it's really like a

8:17

moral decay, like a spiritual decay,

8:19

right? This record was

8:22

recorded during the Vietnam War. It

8:24

was a few years after the Kent

8:26

State Massacre. You get the

8:29

sense that like a lot of

8:31

musicians of Gil Scott Heron's generation

8:34

were wrestling with the idealism

8:36

of the 60s kind of

8:38

given away to another sort

8:40

of feeling. I don't necessarily want

8:42

to call it pessimism, but

8:44

just that facade

8:47

of idealism of

8:50

the 60s kind of falling

8:53

away as the 60s gave way

8:55

to the 70s. In the song,

8:57

it just feels heavy,

8:59

but a lot of it feels familiar, like

9:02

the stuff that he's

9:04

talking about and the

9:06

emotion that he's conveying. We're

9:09

going to come back in a minute and talk about how all

9:11

of this relates to now, but right

9:13

now, let's hear Winter in America, Gil Scott

9:15

Heron. I

9:43

had a chance to grow old, and

9:45

now it's winter. Yes,

10:02

and all of the

10:04

hell have been killed

10:07

off the centerway. Yeah,

10:11

but you people know,

10:14

people know it's better. Winter

10:20

in America. Gil

10:24

Scott Herron and Brian Jackson with Winter

10:26

in America. That song wasn't

10:28

on the original release of the album Winter in

10:30

America from May 1974. It was

10:32

released a little bit later. I've been talking to

10:35

John Morrison for the Culture Corner. I'm Raina

10:37

Durris, and we're talking about Winter in America. It

10:39

turns 50 this May. 50 years

10:43

after it was released, why is

10:45

this album so important? I

10:49

think that like

10:51

a lot of Gil Scott's music

10:54

and poetry, Winter

10:56

in America works on

10:58

two fundamental levels, right? It

11:02

gets to the heart of what America

11:04

is historically, but

11:07

still speaks to what the

11:10

country actually is in

11:12

whatever contemporary sense. 1974,

11:16

when this record came out, or today.

11:19

So this is a

11:21

country that was built on

11:23

racism, still practices racism today.

11:26

This is a country that

11:28

was forged by a genocide

11:30

and still sponsors genocide. So

11:33

it's not only speaking to where

11:36

America was, a lot

11:38

of what he's saying still

11:41

applies to this country's

11:44

values and practices at its

11:46

core. So it resonates

11:48

when you sit and listen. It's

11:51

not a prophetic record

11:55

in so much in the sense that Gil

11:58

Scott Herron had a deep understanding. understanding

12:01

of what America was at its

12:03

beginning and what it was at his time and

12:06

because Because

12:08

those practices that founded this country

12:11

Haven't changed then the

12:13

music still makes sense and

12:16

the lyrics still resonate

12:18

and apply to today We're

12:21

talking about the album winter in America

12:23

turns 50 years old this May

12:25

from Gillscott Heron and Brian Jackson John

12:27

I want to thank you for bringing in this album today for us.

12:30

Yeah, thank you for having me always John

12:32

Morrison is a podcast host and the host of

12:35

culture cypher radio on W XP and in Philadelphia

12:37

where we make World Cafe He joins me every

12:39

month for the culture corner. I'm Marina Durris back

12:41

in a moment with more World Cafe I'm

12:47

Rachel Martin. You probably know how interview

12:49

podcasts with famous people usually go There's

12:51

a host a guest and a light

12:54

Q&A but on wild card. We have

12:56

ripped up the typical script It's a

12:58

new podcast from NPR where I invite

13:00

actors artists and comedians to play a

13:02

game Using a special deck of cards

13:04

to talk about some of life's biggest

13:06

questions Listen to wild card wherever you

13:08

get your podcasts only from NPR on

13:11

this week's episode of wild card actor Chris

13:13

Pine tells us It's okay not to be

13:15

perfect. My film got absolutely decimated

13:17

when it premiered which brings up

13:19

for me one of my primary

13:22

Triggers or whatever is like not being like

13:24

I'm Rachel Martin Chris Pine on

13:27

how to find joy in imperfection That's

13:29

on NPR's new podcast wild card the

13:31

game where cards control the conversation

13:35

on the Ted radio hour Researcher Sasha

13:37

Lucione says AI can help us

13:39

find climate solutions But

13:42

just training the technology itself uses a

13:45

ton of energy Training

13:47

charge a beauty for instance emits

13:49

as much carbon as five cars in

13:51

their lifetime Tex climate

13:53

conundrum that's on the Ted

13:56

radio hour from NPR