Umar Bin Hassan at Oslo Mela | KonPro - Kongoi Productions. Artists and musicians online promotion

Umar Bin Hassan at Oslo Mela

Umar Bin Hassan from the Last Poets at Oslo Mela

Umar Bin Hassan was born on 30th October 1948 in Akron, Ohio (United States). In 1969 he moved to Harlem, New York to become one of the Last Poets. These were radical Afro-American poets and are commonly seen as the fathers of hip-hop, because they were the first to read their poems to the drum beat.

The legend has it that Umar had seen the famous Last Poets (then consisting of: Gylain Kain, Abiodun Oyewole, Felipe Luciano and the drummer Nilijah) perform during a concert in Yellow Springs, Ohio and it was as if lightning struck him, so moved was he by their poetry and music.

The Last Poets first spoke out against poverty and racial injustice at a time when artists and revolutionaries were hanging out on the same urban street corners; the Last Poets, Gil Scott-Heron and the Watts Prophets were picking up microphones and djembe drums while the Black Panthers and the Young Lords were picking up guns.

The Last Poets officially started May 19, 1968, at a Malcolm X birthday celebration in Harlem. The group’s originators — Abiodun “Dun” Oyewole, Gylan Kain and David Nelson — took their name from a poem by South African poet Willie Kgositsile, who wrote about the necessity of putting aside poetry in the face of looming revolution.

Bin Hassan made three albums with the Poets: The Last Poets, This is Madness and At Last. In the early nineties he made a comeback with a new CD Be Bop or Be Dead. The CD was produced by Bill Laswell.

Under Oslo Mela, Umar Bin Hassan will take part in Poetry Slam together with other poets like Nasibu Mwanukuzi and Rim Ghebramariam.