Protest song

[semente]

The Nueva Canción is a musical and poetic movement that has developed in various parts of Latin America, both in Central and South America. The movement began in the 1960s and 1970s. Depending on the region, this movement was called the Nueva Trova (Cuba), Canción Folclórica (Central America), Canto Nuevo (Southern Cone), Canto Libre, Canciones de Lucha y Esperanza, etc. Although there are several different styles, within the movement there are two key elements: the renewal of folk music and the inclusion of a social message.

In the 60s and 70s there were several political polarisations and social struggles throughout the Latin American world. The New Chilean Song in particular began during the time of Eduardo Frei Montalvo's presidency between 1964 and 1970. The music incorporated the sounds of traditional Andean music with popular music. Some of the themes of the poems that served as song lyrics were the support of organized labor, agrarian reforms, and the fight against racism.

In 1970 President Frei was succeeded by Salvador Allende Gossens. Allende was only president for three years (November 3, 1970 - September 11, 1973) before being overthrown by a coup d'état backed by the United States. However, during his few years as President Salvador Allende he supported the idea that music should be a way of transmitting social messages. A famous quote from Allende is "No hay revolución sin canciones / There is no revolution without songs."

The Nueva Canción Chilena, perhaps the most famous protest music movement in Latin America, produced artists (especially poets and musicians) known worldwide as Victor Jara, Violeta Parra, Angel Parra, Inti Illimani, Quilapaýn and Sergio Ortega, among others. It's mentioned in the song "One Tree Hill" from the Joshua Tree album by U2:

And in the world a heart of darkness, a fire zone where poets speak their heart then bleed for it.

Jara sang his song, a weapon in the hands of love, though his blood still cries from the ground.

Although the movement was banned by Pinochet's Junta Militar (Government of Chile) after the coup d'etat, artists and their successors continue to play and sing the poems today.

 

 

 

[semente]

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

La Nueva Canción

The New Song Movement in South America

 

The 1970 victory of the Popular Unity government led by Salvador Allende in Chile marked the rise of the first democratically elected socialist government in Latin America. After years of social and political unrest, the election of the Allende government was seen as a beacon of hope by the Left, both in Chile and throughout the region. As the new president-elect took the stage to greet cheering citizens, a banner above his head read, "You Can't Have a Revolution Without Songs. " It was a powerful statement about the role of music in social and political change that had fueled the emerging popular musical movement in South America known as nueva canción (New Song Movement).

 

https://folkways.si.edu/la-nueva-cancion-new-song-movement-south-america/latin-world-struggle-protest/music/article/smithsonian

[semente]

Violeta Parra's song Gracias A La Vida was immortalised by the great singer Mercedes Sosa:

 

Thanks to life

 

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.

It gave me two stars, which when I open them,

Perfectly distinguish black from white

And in the tall sky its starry backdrop,

And within the multitudes of the one I love.

 

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.

It gave me hearing that, in all of its reach

Records night and day crickets and canaries,

Hammers and turbines, bricks and storms,

And the tender voice of my beloved.

 

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.

It gave me sound and the alphabet.

With them the words I think and declare:

“Mother,” “Friend,” “Brother” and light shining down on

The road of the soul of the one I'm loving.

 

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.

It gave me the steps of my tired feet.

With them I have traversed cities and puddles

Valleys and deserts, mountains and plains.

And your house, your street and your garden.

 

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.

It gave me this heart that shakes its frame,

When I see the fruit of the human brain,

When I see good so far from evil,

When I look into the depth of your light eyes…

 

Thanks to life, which has given me so much.

It gave me laughter and it gave me tears.

With them I distinguish happiness from pain

The two elements that make up my song,

And your song, as well, which is the same song.

And everyone’s song, which is my very song.

 

 

[semente]

Todo Cambia / Everything Changes

 

That which is superficial changes

Also that which is profound

the way of thinking changes

Everything in this world changes

 

The weather changes as the years go by

The shepherd changes his flock

and just as everything changes

the fact that I change it's not in the least strange

 

The finest diamond changes its brightness

as it travels from hand to hand

the bird changes its nest

So does a lover change the way he feels

 

The traveler changes his path

even if this proves to be harmfull

and just as everything changes

the fact that I change it's not in the least strange

 

Changes, everything changes

 

The sun changes its course

to give way to the night

The plant changes and gets dressed in green

during spring

 

The beast changes its fur

the hair of an old person changes

and just as everything changes

the fact that I change it's not in the least strange

 

But my love doesn't change

no matter how far away I find myself

neither the memory nor the pain

of my country and my people

 

What changed yesterday

will have to change tomorrow

Just as I change

in this foreign land

 

Changes, everything changes

 

But my love doesn't change

no matter how far away I find myself

neither the memory nor the pain

of my country and my people

 

Changes, everything changes

 

 

 

[semente]

Book suggestion:

 

 

https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-What-We-Were/dp/1609450027

[semente]

I am a complete ignorant when it comes to rap/hip-hop protest music because I don't like the genre but it would be wonderful if someone could make a few interesting suggestions.

[semente]

Something a bit more modern.

Note how the crowd can recognise itself in the lyrics...

 

Que Parva Que Eu Sou / How silly am I

 

I’m a “generation without pay (broke?)”,
And it doesn’t bother me.
How silly am I.

 

I’m lucky to be an intern,
Because things are bad and will remain so.
How silly am I.

 

And I wonder:
What a silly world,
Where we have to study
To be a slave.

 

I’m a “still living with parents (boomerang?) generation”,
If I already have everything, why want more?
How silly am I.

 

I keep postponing children, husband,
And still have the car to pay.
How silly am I.

 

And I wonder:
What a silly world,
Where we have to study
To be a slave.

 

I'm a “complaint millennial”,
When there’s someone doing worse on TV?
How silly am I.

 

I’m a generation "I can’t take it anymore!”,
And this situation lasts too long.
And silly I am not!

 

And I wonder:
What a silly world,
Where we have to study
To be a slave.

 

What a silly world,
Where we have to study
To be a slave.

 

 

[semente]

In the '80s protest music went global, first with Live Aid and later with the first of two Anti-Apartheid events, the first of which was held in protest for the prolonged arrest of ANC leader Nelson Mandela in June 1988 at Wembley Stadium and broadcast to 67 countries. According to the Wikipedia "In the United States, the Fox television network heavily censored the political aspects of the concert."

 

Nelson Mandela and music: 10 essential anti-apartheid songs

By  Randall Roberts, Los Angeles Times Pop Music Critic

Dec. 5, 2013

 

Nelson Mandela was, quite famously, a fan of European classical music. His two favorite composers were George Frideric Handel and Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, but he grew up exposed to the country’s rich tradition of vocal groups forging a unique form of sacred rhythm music.

 

That changed while the former South African president and longtime democratic activist was imprisoned by the pro-apartheid government from 1962 to 1990. He wasn’t allowed access to music.

Artists, however, used Mandela’s jailing to fuel global protest songs, and during his years in captivity, Mandela’s messages were delivered on the wings of rhythm and melody.

 

The response to Mandela’s cause, in fact, helped bridge cultural divides that continue to hold. One of the best known songs, Artists United Against Apartheid’s “I Ain’t Gonna Play Sun City,” for the first time brought together on record superstars of rock and R&B with the kings of a rising young genre called hip-hop.

 

On the African continent, anti-apartheid couriers such as Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masekela, Youssou N’Dour and the Malopoets expressed outrage through song. As the anti-apartheid movement grew in the 1970s and ‘80s, marquee names such as U2, Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen, Steven Van Zandt and Stevie Wonder spoke or sung out on behalf of Nelson Mandela’s cause.

 

What follows are 10 essential works that celebrate the late Nelson Mandela and his efforts. His spirit, perseverance and dignity fueled not only the cause of liberty and equality, but drove music to great heights.

 

continues here -> https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-nelson-mandela-dies-music-ten-essential-antiapartheid-songs-20130627-story.html

[semente]

I was in my mid teens at the time at the time of the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert. The song that has lingered in my mind and which still sends shivers down my spine is Peter Gabriel's Biko.

 

Biko

 

September '77
Port Elizabeth weather fine
It was business as usual
In police room 619
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead

When I try to sleep at night
I can only dream in red
The outside world is black and white
With only one colour dead
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead

You can blow out a candle
But you can't blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja
-The man is dead

And the eyes of the world are
watching now

watching now

 

 

Steve Biko: Five facts you didn’t know about the anti-apartheid activist

Biko was known for his slogan 'black is beautiful', which he described as meaning 'you are okay as you are, begin to look upon yourself as a human being'

 

Steve Biko, who died fighting apartheid in South Africa, would have turned 70 today.

An illustration commemorating Biko’s life and legacy has been published as a Google Doodle in South Africa, the UK, North America, Portugal and other countries.

Here are five things you may not know about the student leader and activist.

 

continues here -> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/steve-biko-google-doodle-who-five-things-anti-apartheid-south-africa-activist-birthday-a7482486.html

 

[semente]

Manu Chao

 

Clandestino Illegal Alien

 

I only take my grief
alone goes my sentence
Running is my destiny

to circumvent the law

Lost in the heart
of the great babylon
They call me the clandestine
for not carrying papers
 

To city of the north
I went to work
I abandoned my life
between Ceuta and Gibraltar

I'm a streak in the sea
ghost in the city
my life is forbidden
says the authority
dice la autoridad

I only go with my grief
alone goes my sentence
running is my destiny
for not having paper
por no carrying papers

Lost in the heart
of the great babylon
they tell me the clandestine
I am the lawbreaker
 

Argeline

Clandestine

 

Nigerian

Clandestine

 

Bolivian

Clandestine

 

Black hand

Illegal

 

 

At 20, Manu Chao’s ‘Clandestino’ Remains a Radical and Compassionate Work of Art

José-Manuel Thomas Arthur Chao Ortega is perhaps France’s most successful rock musician of all time, not to mention an inimitable icon of rock en español. Yet he probably feels more comfortable being labeled a busker: a musician in the street playing his heart out, observing his surroundings, and making songs about it. He’s known to pop up on the sidewalk next to any given bar of any given city he happens to be in at the moment and start playing. Busking is what taught Manu Chao about the universality of music, and it informs Clandestino, his debut solo album. The project turns 20 this year, and remains perhaps his boldest statement yet.

 

There’s nothing conventional about Clandestino, yet its radicalism relies on humanist values. Although his former band Mano Negra was at one point one of the most popular musical groups in France, Manu renounced the country as his own, disappearing on the road and appearing throughout Mexico, South America, Europe or Africa, something that allowed him to reach audiences beyond traditional borders. The label “world music” – a genre coined by Western record companies as an umbrella term to market folkloric and popular music from across the globe, lumping them together without much context – became widely used around that time, but few artists embodied that kind of post-globalist utopia. Clandestino also rekindled “protest pop” in a way seldom heard before, contributing to a discourse of sociopolitical unrest and selling more than 5 million copies along the way without a supporting tour or official singles released to radio.

 

continues here -> https://remezcla.com/features/music/manu-chao-clandestino-album-20th-anniversary/

 

 

[semente]

Here's another book suggestion (french only, sorry):

 

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clandestin-Ldp-Litterature-Eliette-Abecassis/dp/2253114529/

[semente]

Young, gifted and black
Oh what a lovely precious dream
To be young, gifted and black
Open your heart to what I mean

In the whole world you know
There's a million boys and girls
Who are young, gifted and black
And that's a fact

You are young, gifted and black
We must begin to tell our young
There's a world waiting for you
Yours is a quest that's just begun

When you're feeling really low
Yeah, there's a great truth that you should know
When you're young, gifted and black
Your soul's intact

How to be young, gifted and black
Oh how I long to know the truth
There are times when I look back
And I am haunted by my youth

Oh but my joy of today
Is that we can all be proud to say
To be young, gifted and black
Is where it's at
Is where it's at
Is where it's at

 

Nina Simone's 'Lovely, Precious Dream' For Black Children

By Noel King and Walter Ray Watson

 

 

By the early 1960s, Nina Simone was well-known to the world as a singer, songwriter and classically trained pianist. But around 1963, as race relations in America hit a boiling point, she made a sharp turn in her music — toward activism.

 

First, there was the murder of Medgar Evers that summer. The civil rights leader was killed by a Klansman, shot in the back in his own driveway in Mississippi. Three months later, in Birmingham, Ala., four black girls were killed in a church bombing. In response to the grief and outrage, Simone wrote a powerful song with unsparing lyrics and a provocative title: "Mississippi Goddam."

 

Then, in 1968, she identified a different side of the struggle. The Black Power movement was rising. Pride in being black and beautiful was expressed in big afros and raised fists. She aimed to capture that moment of joy in black identity — and though the song she wrote was addressed to children, it became an anthem for adults, too.

 

"To Be Young, Gifted and Black" was a dedication to Nina Simone's friend, the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, who wrote A Raisin in the Sun. Hansberry was the first black woman to have a play performed on Broadway; she and Simone bonded over civil rights and radical politics.

 

And then, in January 1965, Hansberry died of cancer at the age of 34. A few months before, she had told a group of student essay winners, "I wanted to be able to come here and speak with you on this occasion because you are young, gifted and black."

 

Those words stuck in Nina Simone's head. In an interview recorded at historically black Morehouse College in Atlanta, she said, "I remember getting a feeling in my body, and I said, 'That's it: to be young, gifted and black. That's all.' And sat down at the piano and made up a tune. It just flowed out of me."

 

Simone wrote the music, while the words came from her bandleader, Weldon Irvine. He reportedly sat writing the lyrics in his car, tying up a busy New York City intersection for 15 minutes as he scribbled on napkins and a matchbook cover. Simone had told him to keep it simple — write something that "will make black children all over the world feel good about themselves, forever."

 

continues here -> https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=683021559

 

 

[semente]

On 10/16/2019 at 2:42 AM, Soothsayerman said:

Semente, that is such a great list you've put together, the songs you've picked are iconic, thanks for the effort! Interesting reading.

 

These pale in comparison but here is one I think from the 1980's New Wave era.  The song is about the spread of nationalism/fascism in the USA vis a vis President Ronald Reagan.  This period witnessed the weakening of labor unions both in the US and in the UK which caused some civil unrest.

 

History will repeat itself
Crisis point we're near the hour
Counterforce will do no good
Hot you ass I feel your power
Hitler proves that funky stuff
Is not for you and me girl
Europe's an unhappy land
They've had their fascist groove thang

Brothers, sisters, we don't need this fascist groove thang

Democrats are out of power
Across that great wide ocean
Reagan's president elect
Fascist god in motion
Generals tell him what to do
Stop your good time dancing
Train their guns on me and you
Fascist thang advancing

 

 

 

I was away on a work trip and missed this post. Thanks for your contribution, I'd never heard this before.

 

[semente]

England Lost - Mick Jagger

 

[Intro]
Lost, lost, lost, lost

 

[Chorus]
I went to see England, but England's lost
I went to see England, but England's lost

 

[Verse 1]
And everyone said we were all ripped off
I went to see England, but England lost
Lost, lost, lost
It wasn't much fun standin' in the rain
And we all yelled loud and we all complained
Wasn't much of a game
I got soaked
Didn't look home anyway

 

[Chorus]
I went to see England, but England's lost
I went in the back, but they said, "Piss off"
I went to see England, but England's lost
I went to see England, but England...
I went to see...
I went...
I...

 

[Verse 2]
I lost a blunt, think I lost the pint
She can go home and smoke a joint, anyway
Do you wanna go?
I went to find England, it wasn't there
I went to find England, it wasn't there
I think I lost it in the back of my chair
I think I'm losing my imagination
I'm tired of talking about immigration
You can't get in and you can't get out
I guess that's what we're all about

 

[Chorus]
I went to find England, but...
I went to find England, but...
I went to find England, but...
I went to find England, but England's lost

 

[Bridge]
Lost, lost, lost, lost
Lost, lost, lost, lost

 

[Verse 3]
Had a girl in Lisbon, a girl in Rome
Now I'll have to stay at home
So lock the shallows, bolt the doors
Nothing's gonna be like Singapore
Don't know what's home
Lost, lost, lost, lost
They didn't turn up, the comments complain
No real person is matching their shame
They're much too young and much too old
Growing much too hot and much too cold
That's what I thought

 

[Chorus]
I went to find England
I went to find England
I went to find England
I went to find England, but England's lost

 

 

 

[semente]

George Harrison - The Concert for Bangladesh 1971

Paul Gambaccini remembers this 1971 concert, which set the benchmark for pop-music charity events with the help of some of the performers and those who were in the audience as well as Live Aid organiser Bob Geldof.

 

podcast: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0076hyr

[semente]

 

2013 - A flamenco flash mob performance in a Spanish bank

 

Flamenco flash mobs - seemingly spontaneous dance and song performances - have been taking place in banks all over Andalusia in Spain, causing short, if amusing disruptions to the working day. The brainchild of an anti-capitalist group known as Flo6x8, they are designed to express anger and frustration at the economic crisis. Watch footage of a recent performance in a branch of Bankia.

 

 

[semente]

Flashmob Flamenco 26 Mar 2013

 

In recent years, flamenco has become an increasingly respectable art-form, both in Spain and internationally. But it has also been used as a voice of protest against the current financial meltdown, which is hitting the Andalucia region particularly hard.

Most notable is the flamenco flashmob, a sudden public assembly of dancers and musicians performing in branches of Spain's under-fire banks, with massive YouTube success.

This continues a long tradition of political dissent within flamenco that's little known beyond its inner circle - and even here, it is often played down.

Author and erstwhile flamenco student Jason Webster explores this history, meeting musicians who have protested against the Franco regime and the contemporary economic situation, and examining some of the contradictions of Spain's recent past along the way.

 

podcast - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b01rg228

[semente]

On 9/14/2019 at 8:47 AM, semente said:

 

Why do we build the wall?
My children, my children
Why do we build the wall?

 

Why do we build the wall?
We build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free

 

How does the wall keep us free?
My children, my children
How does the wall keep us free?

 

How does the wall keep us free?
The wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free

 

Who do we call the enemy?
My children, my children
Who do we call the enemy?

 

Who do we call the enemy?
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free

 

Because we have and they have not!
My children, my children
Because they want what we have got!

 

Because we have and they have not!
Because they want what we have got!
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free

 

What do we have that they should want?
My children, my children
What do we have that they should want?

 

What do we have that they should want?
We have a wall to work upon!
We have work and they have none
And our work is never done
My children, my children
And the war is never won
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That's why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free
We build the wall to keep us free

 

 

 

 

The video I linked in the original post got removed from YouTube for some reason:

 

 

[semente]

A History of American Protest Music: When Nina Simone Sang What Everyone Was Thinking

“Mississippi Goddam” was an angry response to tragedy, in show tune form.

 

On June 12, 1963, in the early morning after president John F. Kennedy’s Civil Rights address, activist Medgar Evers was shot in the back as he stood in the driveway of his Mississippi home. He was returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers and officials, and carried an armload of T-shirts that read “Jim Crow Must Go.” Evers was taken to a local hospital, where he died less than an hour after being admitted.

On September 15, 1963, four girls were killed when white supremacists planted more than a dozen sticks of dynamite beneath the side steps of the African-American 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The children were preparing for a sermon titled “A Love That Forgives.” According to one witness, their bodies flew across the basement “like rag dolls.”

When she heard the news, jazz musician Nina Simone was paralyzed. “It was more than I could take,” she remembered, “and I sat struck dumb in my den like St. Paul on the road to Damascus: all the truths that I had denied to myself for so long rose up and slapped my face. The bombing of the little girls in Alabama and the murder of Medgar Evers were like the final pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that made no sense until you had fitted the whole thing together. I suddenly realized what it was to be Black in America in 1963, but it wasn’t an intellectual connection…it came as a rush of fury, hatred and determination. In church language, the Truth entered into me and I ‘came through.'”

Simone’s initial reaction was less than Christian. “I had it in mind to go out and kill someone,” she remembered. “I tried to make a zip gun.”

Andy, her husband and manager, intervened. “Nina,” he said, “you can’t kill anyone. You are a musician. Do what you do.”

An hour later, Nina Simone had composed a song called “Mississippi Goddam.” “It was my first civil rights song,” she recalled, “and it erupted out of me quicker than I could write it down.”

 

continues here -> https://longreads.com/2017/04/20/a-history-of-american-protest-music-when-nina-simone-sang-what-everyone-was-thinking/

[semente]

56 minutes ago, sphinxsix said:

People were put in jail for music': a brief history of Latin American rock

 

Well spotted! Should be interesting.

[semente]

Strange Fruit: The most shocking song of all time?

Billie Holiday recorded her iconic version of Strange Fruit on 20 April 1939. Eighty years on – in the first of our Songs that Made History series – Aida Amoako explores how a poem about lynching became a timeless call to action.

 

“Can you imagine never having heard this song before and realising what the strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees is? That’s something that unfolds in the time of listening, so that image of bulging eyes and twisted mouth jumps out at the listener.” Cultural critic Emily J Lordi is describing the particular power of a song that still shocks 80 years after it was first performed.

On 20 April 1939, the jazz singer Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan in 1915) stepped into a studio with an eight-piece band to record Strange Fruit. This jarring song about the horrors of lynching was not only Holiday’s biggest hit, but it would become one of the most influential protest songs of the 20th Century – continuing to speak to us about racial violence today.

 

continues here -> https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190415-strange-fruit-the-most-shocking-song-of-all-time

 

 

 

Strange Fruit

 

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

 

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

 

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

[semente]

Meet Linton Kwesi Johnson:

 

Many of Linton Kwesi Johnson’s early poems deal with the conflict between members of the black British community and a police force which, in the 1970s in particular, was guilty of institutionalised racism. ‘Sonny’s Lettah’ draws attention to the Sus, or ‘Suspected Person’, Law, which in effect led to police stopping, searching and arresting a disproportionate number of black youths. Johnson translates a typical written form – the letter – into an oral tale, differentiating the stanzas of the poem through rhythm, timbre and intonation in performance.

Sonny’s report to his mother on the attack suffered by his little brother and his own impulsive reaction to the policemen’s violence begins with conventional, affectionate but respectful formality. As the violence is described, however, the beat of the poem becomes more emphatic and the conflict is captured in the rhythm Johnson creates.

As the poem progresses we learn that one of the policemen has died and Sonny has been charged with murder. The alternate ‘an’ and ‘mi’ lines describing the fight create a picture of a macabre rhythmical dance with a deeply tragic end when the policeman, ‘an crash/an ded’. The poem concludes with a return to the affectionate formality of the opening.

https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/sonny-lettah/

 

Dear Mama,

Good Day.
I hope dat wen
deze few lines reach yu,
they may find yu in di bes af helt.

Mama,
I really don’t know how fi tell yu dis,
cause I did mek a salim pramis
fi tek care a likkle Jim
an try mi bes fi look out fi him.

Mama,
I really did try mi bes,
but nondiles
mi sarry fi tell you seh
poor likkle Jim get arres.

It woz di miggle a di rush howah
wen evrybady jus a hosel an a bosel
fi goh home fi dem evenin showah;
mi an Jim stand up
waitin pan a bus,
nat cauzin no fus,
wen all af a sudden
a police van pull-up.

Out jump tree policeman,
di hole a dem carryin batan.
Dem waak straight up to mi an Jim.

One a dem hol awn to Jim
seh him tekin him in;
Jim tell him fi let goh a him
far him noh dhu notn
an him naw teef,
nat even a butn.
Jim start to wriggle
di police start to giggle.

Mama,
mek I tell yu whe dem dhu to Jim
Mama,
mek I tell yu whe dem dhu to him:

dem tump him in him belly
an it turn to jelly
dem lick him pan him back
and him rib get pap
dem lick him pan him hed
but it tuff like led
dem kick him in him seed
an it started to bleed

Mama,
I jus coudn stan-up deh
and noh dhu notn:

soh me jook one in him eye
an him started to cry
mi tump one in him mout
an him started to shout
mi kick one pan him shin
an him started to spin
mi tump him pan him chin
an him drap pan a bin

an crash
an ded.

Mama,
more policeman come dung
an beat mi to di grung;
dem charge Jim fi sus,
dem charge me fi murdah.

Mama,
don fret,
dont get depres
an doun-hearted.
Be af good courage
till I hear fram you.

I remain
your son,
Sonny

 

 

[semente]