Friday 27 March 2015
Algiers - Irony. Utility. Pretext.
"Irony. Utility. Pretext."
They said it’s not enough
just to shoot us down
It’s a sound that’s systematized
It’s a noise just to drown us out
But when your time is come
we’ll all be there
just to watch you fall
And then one by one
all the parasites will just fall off
You put your vote in a ballot box
This one’s marked UNDP
Inscribe your
tyrant’s name in blood
Choice is the guillotine
We’ll put our faith into Afro Pop
in a decolonized context
Espouse the aesthetes’
contempt for ethos
Irony. Utility. Pretext.
“Embrace primitive man”
(La-la-la-la-la, you say)
“Destroy primitive man”
(La-la-la-la-la, you say)
“With our art
we’ll transcend again”
You put your hand out to shake
Then they export you in chains
You fought
for centuries for change
And they gave you
more of the same
They swapped the dogs
and the cross
for sublimated forestalling
They changed the names
of the boss
until you forgot who it was
Find your favorite color
so you can wash it out
in your hymns
Correcting primitive cracks
into straight lines
Superiority is born again
We’ll put our faith into Afro Pop
in a decolonized context
Espouse the aesthetes’
contempt for ethos
Irony. Utility. Pretext.
But all you can say is...
HA!
Wha Dat Hi Fi In Session (1985)
Featuring: Little John, Pampidoo, Philip Fraser, Tippa Lee & Rappa Roberts, Yami Bolo, Danny Culture and Barry G
Via
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Luc Sante: Arleen
Let me play you “Arleen,” by General Echo, a seven-inch 45 on the Techniques label, produced by Winston Riley, a number one hit in Jamaica in the autumn of 1979. “Arleen” is in the Stalag 17 riddim, a slow, heavy, insinuating track that is nearly all bass—the drums do little more than bracket and punctuate, and the original’s brass-section color has been entirely omitted in this version. I’m not really sure what Echo is saying. It sounds like “Arleen wants to dream with a dream.” A dream within a dream. Whether or not those are his actual words, it is the immediate sense. The riddim is at once liquid and halting, as if it were moving through a dark room filled with hanging draperies, incense and ganja smoke, sluggish and nearly impenetrable air—the bass walks and hurtles. Echo’s delivery is mostly talkover, with just a bit of sing-song at the end of the verse. It is suggestive, seductive, hypnotic, light-footed, veiling questionable designs under a scrim of innocence, or else addled, talking shit in a daze as a result of an injury: “My gal Arleen, she love whipped cream/Every time I check her she cook sardine….”
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Max Roach & M’Boom, Bobby Hebb with Ron Carter & The Persuasions - Live on SOUL! (17/11/71)
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"The Roots of Black Protest" Max Roach & the J.C. White Singers
Arthur Burghardt as Frederick Douglass
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