Gylan Kain, who was one of the founders of the poetry and music collective The Last Poets, died on February 7, in Lelystad, in the Netherlands, where he lived in a nursing home. He was 81 years old. The news was spread, more or less after that time, but only in the local press, in addition to being published by the family in small websites and even on the Last Poets’ social media accounts. But it escaped a wider public until this Monday, when the The New York Times He dedicated an obituary to him, almost a month and a half after the poet’s death.
Kain was born Frank Gillen Oates in Harlem, New York, in 1942. He lived with his mother above an apostolic church, something that had a strong influence on his path and career. Having fallen in love with Shakespeare from an early age, he decided to pursue writing and changed his legal name to Gylan Kain. According to the poet’s introduction text written by the family, “Gylan” came from the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and “Kain” from the French philosopher Albert Camus, who called Cain the first rebel. It was in 1968, on the anniversary of the birth of Malcolm X, who had been killed three years earlier, that the poet founded, with Abiodun Oyewole and David Nelson, the Last Poets. Shortly afterwards, Felipe Luciano joined them.
With the group, he appeared on television, in a program called Souland in the documentary Right On!, by Herbert Danska, from 1970. Having not recorded any proper album with them, which had meanwhile separated into two factions, the Last Poets and the Original Last Poets, with Kain being a member of the latter, he left the group that same year. He was not the most notable member of the ensemble and, years later, he even tried to hide this initial connection. The influence of the Last Poets, seen as important precursors of rap in its combination of rhythm and spoken word and in social contestation in line with the civil rights movement and black nationalism, it is not measured in recorded music alone. It was also at that time that, under the name KAIN, he recorded the album The Blue Guerrillawhich was accompanied by the piano of Gregory ‘Saint’ Strickland and a young guitarist called Nile Rodgers, who would shortly later found the disco legends Chic.
Still in the early 1970s, Kain also became a theater actor, working with Joseph Papp, from the Public Theater in New York, in plays such as The Black Terror, by Richard Wesley. He was also part of a theater company made up only of black and Latino actors, with a colleague who was still little known, Morgan Freeman. This group aimed to represent Shakespeare. He moved to the Netherlands in the 1980s, working in theater, poetry and music. He has appeared in films such as the comedy Wings of Fameby Otakar Votocek, from 1990. In 1997, he recorded the solo album Feel This, signing it Baby Kain. His recent favorite name was Kain the Poet. He has worked with the American poet and percussionist Z’EV and the Dutch group Electric Barbarian.
In the 1990s, the soundtrack of Right On! and you The Blue Guerrilla brought him back to people’s ears, even if his name wasn’t involved. He had already influenced rap, now rap was coming to use its own voice. Dr. Dre picked up on samples from Kain to yours The Chronicle It is Doggystyleby Snoop Dogg. The British The Prodigy also took on the soundtrack of Right On! for Voodoo People, from 1994, giving the song its name. Already MF Doom’s KMD (at the time known as Zev Love X) were fascinated by The Blue Guerrilla and saw themselves in Kain’s sense of humor, having used the poet’s phrases throughout his second (and final) album, BL_CK B_ST_RDS. Digable Planets, the jazz rap trio, also used their recorded voice on Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space)the debut album.
