Conference Panellist
Conference Panellist
Brian Jackson
Musician, Jazz-Funk Pioneer
One-half of the legendary duo Gil Scott Heron and Brian Jackson, Brian began his professional career at 18, having recorded nine albums by his 27th birthday. The young prodigies recorded their very first album with greats Ron Carter, Bernard Purdie and Hubert Laws.
Together, Scott-Heron and Jackson wrote songs that depicted the social and political context of their time, with a rich musicality that borrows from jazz, blues and soul. Their catalogue has travelled through time and generations and has been a source of sample material for decades. Artists such as Tupac, Common, Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar, among others, have found Brian is considered an early progenitor of the musical genre called “conscious music” – music with a message, which prompted New Yorker Magazine to call him “a musical pioneer.”