	Portrait of a Radical
	A Crisis of Faith
	State of the Union
	Quest for the Grail
BIOGRAPHIES
The continuous stream of imagery in State of the Union is punctuated by the powerful soundtrack that paces the film. Mirroring the subject and rhythm of the film, the soundtrack is powerful and edgy - fusing the energy of jazz greats Miles Davis, Gil Scott-Heron and Wayne Shorter.
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991)was an American jazz musician, widely considered one of the most influential of the 20th century. A trumpeter, bandleader and composer, Davis was at the forefront of almost every major development in jazz from World War II to the 1990s. He played on various early bebop records and recorded one of the first cool jazz records. He was partially responsible for the development of modal jazz, and jazz fusion arose from his work with other musicians in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Davis was late in a line of jazz trumpeters that started with Buddy Bolden and ran through Joe "King" Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie. Many of the major figures in post-war jazz played in one of Davis' groups at some point in their career. Davis was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 13, 2006. He has also been inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame, and the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
Gil Scott-Heron
Gil Scott-Heron (born April 1, 1949) is an American poet and musician known primarily for his late 1960s and early 1970s work as a spoken word performer. He is associated with African American militant activism, and is best known for his poem and song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". He is the son of Jamaican footballer Gil Heron, who was one of the first black professionals to play in the UK. Scott-Heron began his recording career in 1970 with the LP Small Talk at 125th and Lenox. Bob Thiele of Flying Dutchman Records produced the album and Scott-Heron was accompanied by Eddie Knowles and Charlie Saunders on conga and David Barnes on percussion and vocals. The album's 15 tracks dealt with themes such as the superficiality of television and mass consumerism, the hypocrisy of some would-be Black revolutionaries, white middle-class ignorance of the difficulties faced by inner-city residents, and fear of homosexuals. In the liner notes, Scott-Heron acknowledged as influences Richie Havens, John Coltrane, Otis Redding, Jose Feliciano, Billie Holiday, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Nina Simone, and the pianist who would become his long-time collaborator, Brian Jackson. Scott-Heron is known in many circles as "the godfather of rap" and is widely considered to be one of the genre's founding fathers. Given the political consciousness that lies at the foundation of his work, he can also be called a founder of political rap. Message to the Messengers was a plea for the new generation of rappers to speak for change rather than perpetuate the current social situation, and to be more articulate and artistic. On July 5, 2006, Scott-Heron was sentenced to two to four years in a New York State prison for violating a plea deal on a drug-possession charge by leaving a treatment center. Scott-Heron said he is HIV-positive and claimed the in-patient rehabilitation center stopped giving him his medication. The prosecution countered that Scott-Heron had once skipped out for an appearance with singer Alicia Keys.[3] Scott-Heron's sentence will be complete on July 13, 2009, but he will be eligible for parole two years before that date. He was paroled on May 23, 2007.
Wayne Shorter
Wayne Shorter was one of the most original hard bop tenor saxophonists of the '60s, a composer of lasting originals and an improviser who combined abstraction and emotionalism in equal parts, with tangy tonalities and a tendency toward almost eerie harmonic shadings on ballads. Shorter was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1933. His first important association was with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers ('59-'63), for whom he served as musical director supplying a slew of his own compositions as well as arranging standards (most notably a dynamic re-casting of "Moon River" on 1961's Buhaina's Delight). After graduating from the Blakey institute, Shorter served a long term with Miles Davis ('64-'70) a setting which emphasized his more introspective side, at least in the studio--on live dates, as evidenced on the famous Plugged Nickel date (recorded in '65 but not released in toto until '95) he was as aggressive as he was with Blakey, and a lot more out there, both harmonically and rhythmically. Toward the end of the '60s, as fusion encroached, Shorter shifted his main instrument from tenor to soprano sax, and it was this instrument which he favored with his next group Weather Report ('70-'85), which he co-led with Joe Zawinul. From the Blakey years on he also released solo records, the best being the '60s Blue Notes, where his personal takes on first hard bop and then fusion were most thoroughly explored. The sad fact about Wayne Shorter's career is that it became less interesting as it progressed. Throughout the '60s he played like a man possessed, a natural original demanding to be heard on his own terms. But sometime during the '70s he seemed to lose his drive, and too many of his later recordings sound bland and distracted. This Biography was written by Richard C. Walls.