Gylan Kain, founder of the Last Poets and forerunner of rap, dies at the age of 81

Gylan Kain, a Harlem-born poet and performance artist who founded The Last Poets, the spoken word collective that laid the foundation for rap music in the late 1960s by delivering fiery poetic salvos about racism and oppression over pulsating drum beats, died on February 7 in Lelystad, Netherlands. He was 81.

He died in a nursing home of complications from heart disease, his son Rufus Kain said. His death was not widely reported at the time.

The Last Poets, which originally consisted of Mr Kain, David Nelson and Abiodun Oyewole, joined the Black Arts Movement – ​​the cultural outgrowth of the wider Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s – of which the activist poet and playwright Amiri Baraka was a central figure.

With their staccato wordplay and sinewy rhythms, the Last Poets were pioneers of performance poetry, producing portraits of black street life that were often laced with the guerrilla spirit of revolution.

They made their public debut on May 19, 1968 at Mount Morris Park, now Marcus Garvey Park, in Harlem, during a celebration of assassinated civil rights leader Malcolm X. Less than two months after the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, it was a fraught period in Black America, but also a time seeping with calls for dramatic change.

“There was such electricity in the air,” Mr. Kain said in “The Last Poets,” a 2002 documentary with commentary by Isaac Hayes, Ossie Davis and KRS-One. “So much was happening in the world of black consciousness. It was just a good time for black people to be alive – and for young black people in particular.”

The Last Poets were often deeply confrontational and aimed to galvanize apolitical black listeners into action with the most racially charged language possible. Yet Mr. Kain considered himself a poet and not a convert, as evidenced by his lyricism on “James Brown,” one of eighteen appearances in the 1970 film. “Right on!”:

Cry the pain
Of broken men
Who stumble past empty dreams
When the night opens its mouth wide
To grind you down, to swallow
In pieces of black dust

Another song from that movie: “The Shalimar,” used rich and rhythmic language to evoke the scene in a Harlem bar: “The voodoo, hoodoo, what-you-don’t-dare-do people/move off the walls, jump off the floors.”

Twenty years later, an excerpt from the introduction of Mr. Kain on the song – “like we always do around this time” – made its way into hip-hop history and appeared as a sample on Dr. Dre’s landmark 1992 album, “The Chronic,” and on “Doggystyle,” Snoop Dogg’s 1993 debut album.

The Last Poets were celebrated as the forerunners of rap, along with their contemporary Gil Scott-Heron, probably best known for his 1970 tour de force.The revolution will not be broadcast”, who is often called the godfather of rap.

A 2010 profile of Mr. Scott-Heron in The New Yorker quoted Chuck D of Public Enemy as saying that the Last Poets and Mr. Scott-Heron “weren’t just important; they are necessarybecause they are the roots of rap: taking a word and juxtaposing it into a kind of music.

“You can get into Ginsberg and the Beat poets and Dylan,” he added, “but Gil Scott-Heron is the manifestation of the modern word. He and the Last Poets set the stage for all the others.”

Frank Gillen Oates was born on May 26, 1942 in Harlem. He was raised by his mother, Hilda Oates, and spent much of his childhood in the South Bronx. As a youth, he attended services at Pentecostal churches, where the thunderous oratorio showed him at an early age the power words had to influence hearts and minds.

The family eventually moved to Queens, where he developed a love of theater – especially Shakespeare – at Long Island City High School. After a stint at Hunter College in Manhattan, he took up acting and adopted a new name, a spin on Dylan, referring to the poet Dylan Thomas, and the biblical figure Cain, whom Albert Camus described as the original rebel.

In 1965, Mr. Kain founded the Far East Theater in the East Village, which hosted plays, lectures and political symposiums. It wasn’t long before he saw a new way to reach black audiences, drawing inspiration from the Beats, who often performed free verse with jazz accompaniment.

“I had said to my fellow black artists there in the village, ‘I’m going to Harlem and making poetry for black people,’” Mr. Kain recalled in the 2002 documentary. “And these fellow black artists who — in that time, it’s all new, it doesn’t exist yet – said, ‘Black people don’t like poetry.’

“So I said, ‘They’ll like mine.'”

The Last Poets developed a fervent following. They performed on “Soul!” a television variety show featuring black musicians and other artists; at the East Wind, a cultural center on 125th Street that served as its headquarters; and on tours of colleges across the country.

But tensions would soon arise. Mr. Kain was annoyed by an offer to record an album for a white producer label. “I said no because he was a businessman who had no interest in what we were trying to accomplish together,” he said in the documentary. “The Black Power mandate was that we were going to build our own institutions.”

The group’s lineup evolved and within two years it had split into two factions fighting for the Last Poets name. Mr. Oyewole, together with Alafia Pudim, Umar Bin Hassan and drummer Nilaja Obabi, released an album called “The Last Poets” in 1970, while Mr. Kain, Mr. Nelson and Felipe Luciano (the future community activist and television journalist) appeared in 1971 on vinyl as the Original Last Poets on the soundtrack album for “Right On!”

By then, Mr. Kain had already left the group to concentrate on acting, although he did release a solo album, “The Blue Guerrilla,” which Thom Jurek of AllMusic described as “a freestyle set before such a thing was even a dream.

“Kain is the one pissed off cat,” said Mr. Jurek, “who rages not only against the usual necessary concerns, but also against the stereotypes in his own community.”

Mr. Kain appeared in productions at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater in New York, including 1971’s “The Black Terror,” in which he starred as a revolutionary assassin. In his New York Times review, Clive Barnes wrote that Mr. Kain gave “a beautifully understated and thoughtful performance,” adding: “His doubts and concerns are always apparent, but so is his reserved strength and dignity. ”

By 1984, Mr. Kain had grown tired of living in the United States. After the murder of a close friend, he moved to Amsterdam, where he continued to perform, perform his poetry and record records, including a 1997 solo album, ‘Feel This’.

Mr. Kain’s marriage to June Lum ended in divorce; they had three children. Along with his son Rufus, from his relationship with Lian Schaab, Mr. Kain’s survivors include two other sons, Khalil Kain and Khayyam Kain, from his marriage; two daughters, Khairah Klein (from his marriage) and Amber Kain (from his relationship with Karen Perry); and seven grandchildren.

Despite their lasting legacy, the Last Poets had little sense of fate in their earliest days.

“Our first performances were for ourselves, and that lasted for weeks and months,” Mr. Kain said in the documentary.

“You play an instrument,” he added, “and you practice it, and nothing happens, but you know the scale, and one day music comes out.” And I say that one day music came out of this effort.