The leaders of music

Why did the people stop singing?
Where are those saccharine smiles that tasted just right on the gliding diphthongs during recitation?
What about those eyes that kindled so bright as the scintillating sun delighted in dark skins?
Where is the speech that used to preach that it’s a sin to bleach our skins?
Maybe we need to re-teach the truth and pain about beauty being skin deep.
Why did the people stop dancing?
Where are those wobbling ashy knees that marched for more than 300 days and nights?
And those nappy ‘fros that swayed to the beat of freedom and marked the knights.
And let’s act like the segregations, the bombings, and the KKKs were all right—
that the constitution didn’t invite the exclusion of race and gender as ways of evolution.
Why did the people stop listening?
To the contributions of X and King, who united people into colourful revolutions,
Their attributions spin the world on its axis prompting youth into selfless action.
Then why, oh why, are we enslaving ourselves in today’s institutions by reaming unconscious,
To the Eurocentric education that we are receiving—this is just another commission for retribution.
O.K.
Listen now, listen to the words I am about to sing and let your hips sway to the ways,
Our Sisters and Brothers used to play till the night cited their long days of carrying cottons.
Listen to their smooth voices hollering over society’s head, to dance in the humid stilled air,
Thick like molasses, their voices had a flow that even the Southern bitterness couldn’t breach.
Can you see how their slim callous hands would play the guitars, each chord feeling their blues,
As their words indulge in double talk for the shock listeners who were never marked by the sun.
O.K.
Listen, listen now, there’s no excuse when you abuse views that doesn’t induce your views,
Your thoughts are infused with reduced narration; your incomplete translations are half-truths.
You never ask for explanations when you receive diluted information about human relations,
You got technologies that continue to ooze ideologies, such demands for cultural sovereignty.
You indulge in cultural imperialism and misogynistic themes toward the one who bore you,
All in the name of fighting oppression, when really it’s your accession toward fame and money.
Don’t stay a word, just listen. “I heard it through the grapevine” that a change is coming,
“A change is gonna come”, and we are all going to be alright, even if I never met my motha.
Even if I never traced the lines on my fatha’s hand to see if he would be a grandfatha,
Even if I never met Park, Holiday, and Hughes, I still sing and dance—I still have a dream.
Rama Kaba
Contributor