“If you really want to see Washington you should come and hang out with me...” --Gil Scott-Heron in Black Wax.
Black Wax features Black American poet-composer-singer Gil Scott-Heron, the man Melody Maker called “the most dangerous musician alive,” and his 10-piece Midnight Band, performing their powerful music around Washington D.C., where songs like “Whitey on the Moon,” “The H2O-Gate Blues,” “Washington, D.C.” and “B Movie” become wonderfully filmic. Between songs, Scott-Heron recites his poetry and discusses his work as a poet and teacher. Probably the ideal subject for an interview-documentary, Scott-Heron is always entertaining, always political; Black Wax never misses a beat. Commissioned by BBC's Channel Four and directed by American filmmaker Robert Mugge (Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise), Black Wax had its world premiere at the 1982 London Film Festival, where it was called “a film about music, about poetry, about Black consciousness in America today.... It is funny, it is sharp-edged, it is eye-opening. The man is remarkable and so is the film....”