The Last Poets: Gylan Kain, David Nelson, and Felipe Luciano

The Last Poets: have you seen this before? Last Poets were rappers of the civil rights era. Maybe the first rappers before DJ Kool Herc & Coke La Rock. Right On! is a pioneering performance film, a compelling record of radical Black sentiment in 1960s America, and a precursor of the hip-hop revolution in musical culture. It features the original Last Poets—Gylan Kain, David Nelson, and Felipe Luciano—performing 28 numbers adapted from their legendary appearance at New York’s Paperback Theater in 1969, shot guerilla-style on the streets and rooftops of lower Manhattan. Opening months after the better-known music documentary Woodstock and almost simultaneously with Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Right On! was described by its producer as “the first ‘totally black film,’” making “no concession in language and symbolism to white audiences.” You can watch it here at MOMA: atleast for now, but they may take it down or here as Im post