Boubacar Traore and the late Ali Farka Toure – together in this video playing Malian acoustic guitar blues. Pentatonic scale, desert moods, blackness, the limitless power of the sun. The Bambara language finds expression amidst the riffs and chords, finger licks, the audible gifts. It is good to be Afrikan – to share in a heritage that ranges from the blues to djembe to Afro-beat to soukous and everything in between. This is “Duma Ma Yelema” by Boubacar Traore.
Blues informs hip-hop in a very clear fashion. Listen to Robert Johnson’s track “They’re Red Hot” and you witness that early talking blues spitting. Talking blues are an under-studied science – and by studying talking blues one comes to understand that hip-hop is much older than DJ Kool Herc.
And blues itself emerges from griots singing, in the telling of tales like that of Sundiata by our relatives in the old Mali, Songhai and Ghana empires. Blues tells our stories, plain and simple. It tells our pains and our triumphs. Thus much homage is due to the blues. And the blues must be claimed by Afrikans as something key in our cultural space, and as a historical creation of the global black experience.
Malian masters tell stories again now, in their native tongues, on the salt flats of the Sahel. We must listen well. We can learn a great deal from the rhythm alone, let alone the mood created in the riffs, licks, and language of the desert blues.
Long live Ali Farka Toure.
Talking blues! Talk Blue! Talking blues! Grotto news! Black man sues! My lady died last Tues! Mad Uncle Haqq wants to stalk some Jews! Aunt Manna talks just like she coos! Cuckoos late on paying dues! Pay your dues to the Talking Blues!
This song, “Issa,” is from the 2007 album Na Afriki by Dobet Gnahoré, from Côte d’Ivoire. I do not know Malinke, the language this song is sung in, though I certainly wish I did. Perhaps I will learn that language one day. Meanwhile, I found the imagery in this video so striking that I was moved to comment on it. Those who have the liner notes to this album, or who know malinke, feel free to correct my interpretations.
It seems that the child is approached both lovingly and anxiously by Dobet and the other woman in this video. I assume the boy’s name is Issa. He is the focal point of affection and what I perceive to be wisdom-teaching from the mother(s). Yet his future – particularly as a young Afrikan – will surely be uncertain. Will he even heed the advice of his elders? Is he even listening to them in the first place?
The Afrikan woman loves her child so. But here, the mother and her sister/ friend shake their heads in quiet dread. They want the best for him, but the world is not the best. And it will not be up to them to get Issa to want the best of and for himself.
What does this mean? One generation can’t easily prevent the suffering of the next, despite their best wishes. It will take more than one mother imparting wisdom onto one child for the next generation to make more progress, on a human scale, for a more beneficent existence in their lives.
Generations of Afrikans being born today and recently have been offered a worse world, and worse prospects and opportunities, by the preceding generations, so they won’t rise easily. Fathers and mothers have to be wiser, so young ones are more confident in themselves. The mass of doubt the elders share between themselves, outside the presence of Issa, won’t do the boy any good. Issa must know that trouble is everywhere, and not be shielded or sheltered from the suffering of the world and of his own peers, nor from the fact that all that suffering is in part due to the actions of his parents’ generation. Issa didn’t ask to be born, so tell him all the truth. That way he will be a stronger Afrikan and will know what the precedents of current conditions are so as to affect means to create conditions which promise a better future today and tomorrow.
To the young black Afrikan youth all over the world! Take heed and get smart!
Girl: You ain’t shit your daddy ain’t shit your brother ain’t shit your money ain’t shit your lab ain’t shit your rings ain’t shit your gear ain’t shit your jewels ain’t shit your kicks ain’t shit nigga your whips ain’t shit Bobby you ain’t shit nigga I’m the shit you ain’t shit your daddy ain’t shit your brother ain’t shit your money ain’t shit your lab ain’t shit your rings ain’t shit your gear ain’t shit, your jewels ain’t shit your kicks ain’t shit, your whips ain’t shit Bobby, you ain’t shit, nigga I’m the shit you ain’t shit, your daddy ain’t shit your brother ain’t shit, your money ain’t shit your lab ain’t shit, Bobby you ain’t shit your rings ain’t shit, your gear ain’t shit your jewels ain’t shit, your kicks ain’t shit your whips ain’t shit, nigga, I’m the shit You ain’t shit, your daddy ain’t shit your brother ain’t shit, your money ain’t shit your lab ain’t shit, your rings ain’t shit your gear ain’t shit, your jewels ain’t shit your kicks ain’t shit, your whips ain’t shit nigga, I’m the shit…
Comment: The culmination of interpersonal hatred and the disparaging of human worth. Human beings don’t ask to be born. Much less do we ask to be told, “we ain’t shit.” Of course, we ain’t shit. We’ll all pass on down the hill before long, many of us not even having realized our full potential, many of us far too soon. This existence – so ephemeral, like snow just before spring. And as First Sergeant Welsh told Private Witt in the 1998 film The Thin Red Line, “in this world, a man, himself, is nothing. And there ain’t no world, but this one.”
In the Dhammapada, the Buddha says that there is no person in this world who is universally praised or universally chastised. We ain’t all that, no matter what we think. To get rid of ego is very healthy, to get rid of vanity leads to clarity, to get rid of narcissism dispels delusion, to eliminate self-importance is the road to health. We ain’t shit. All we are is what we are.
One still must deal, though, with the biting words up above. “You ain’t shit, nigga I’m the shit.” What if I don’t want to be “the shit?” What if I just want to be a human being? Fame, glory, riches, none of those things move me. I only want to give my life for the betterment of humanity, especially Afrikans. All I know is the world mostly sucks, that I’m a part of it, and therefore I can play some roll in overturning the suckiness of this world. This is something like the Bodhisattva’s vow (to unselfishly enlighten sentient beings). But I don’t consider myself enlightened either. I’m just the world’s student, a work in progress, humble and trying.
“You ain’t shit.” Human beings, in pairing up, may come to hate each other such that their hatred is of a magnitude many times more intense than the heat of the sun. Is such an outcome necessary? I think not. It is total misfortune when it occurs; it brings down families, children, communities, nations, and civilizations.
As humans, we mostly seek affection; we seek validation. The patriarchy of men, which leads to the oppression of women, all too often messes up our chances of seeing each other as human beings, as potential bearers of greatness. The arrogance of men – it says to women that they “ain’t shit” every day of the week. It’s wrong, it’s pompous, and it leads to the destruction of relationships on up.
We should thus recognize correctly, “we ain’t shit.” When we wake up to the reality that we ain’t shit, we become everything. Then we can embrace one another in an atmosphere of openness, honesty and sincere motives. Yeah, I ain’t shit. I hope not to be doing stupid ugly crap that makes you have to remind me, your voice full of hatred, shaking with pain.
This brief rhyme and the video were put together and spat by yours truly, Young Dessalines, the Precision Afrikan. You can pretty much ignore the video images; they are sort of random images from the Eastern Parkway Labor Day Caribbean Carnival in Brooklyn from 2007, just there for the eyes to have something to look at while the ears listen. The lyrics are below – what y’all think? Maad cheesy? It’s a very elementary and humble attempt.
Post-Colonial Boogie
This track is like Paul Bogle
Dessalines on a team that’s local
Nat Turner on a ear-drum burner,
The batwing looks like a trike-bike learner
Harlem to Harare,
We saw the sorry sagas they kicked back our way
Post-colonial Christmas,
The wealth that they stole, it feels like the sunshine missed us.
Who do we blame, the white man,
The ice cream man, or is it the Son of Sam?
Or is it time that we got self-critical?
The fattest man amongst us looks pitiful!
Look at Kibaki, breast-fed by George Pitaki,
Rolls down his draws and khakis
I mean to say, it’s the West or the rest,
Puppet government crest, mediocrity’s best
Robin Hood in a fat suit, swollen ankles,
Steals from the poor from their food to their summer bangles.
It’s cash-crops, minerals and labor,
No getting ahead unless we do them all a favor.
Coup d’état, revolution, Uhuru Sasa!
Long struggle, Chimurenga, behead the bosses!
Amandla! We gotta cut the head from the snake,
Reveal the ways of the leaches we shake.
Poison, pop rockets, slingshots
Strikes on the docks, striking the locks,
The government archives revealed they squeal
Like colonial scrolls, like Mobutu’s soul,
Like a tail of mining concessions
Rehearsed like a Catholic confession,
French firms get perms on unequal terms,
This false democracy only as good as germs,
So when will we learn?
Working-class heroes and sheroes,
They call us underclass dealers and zeroes,
Yo check the mic, who’s Neo?
Lost boy twitches his broken wing
He looks his bully in the eye
He cocks, he swings
Mubarak and Suharto,
Jonas Savimbi,
Kleptos like Ren and Stimpy.
Masses rise up now!
Ceasar’s dying in the forest,
Brutus chicken and he can’t call foul!
New world order?
Not in my name, not in my enclave,
Not in my world, not even over my grave,
You can’t privatize the world,
Steal everything I made,
Can’t toll the seven seas and
Patent the color jade.
We get analytical, the mass gets critical,
The unborn force umbilical.
We the people get off our chains, we lose inhibitions
We beat down Bush with canes!
We getting off the superficial,
Getting off Beyoncé,
Read a little Amos Wilson,
Read a little Chomsky.
Neoliberalism,
Maad unhealthy.
Neo-colonies make slavery stealthy.
Guerrillas in the mist with clenched fists
Do battle with the bosses and slice wrists!
We get free, get a little nookie,
The name of this rhyme is Post-Colonial Boogie!
DISCLAIMER: Don’t expect entries on this blog to be as coherent as stuff on my other blogs, if you’ve ever found those coherent to begin with.
I want to relate to the above 1993 infamous NYC freestyle between Pac and Biggie from the approach, very loosely and irreverently, of the Zen Koan method, or the method of a Madhyamika master writing sastras against uncooked pasta.
Biggie: I got 7 mac-11s, about 8 38s, 9 nines, 10 mac 10s, the shits never end… 357 bitches.
Comment: In the phenomenal world biblical characters and babalawos would rightly recognize the embrace of war tools and murder kits expressed above as troubling at best. Doing needless harm to sentient beings is often considered the road to demerit.
But in the world seen as quintessence of mind (free of delusions and appearances), the sword of wisdom (mere words) can be said to be interchangeable with “9 nines, 10 mac 10s,” etc. For Zen Master Dogen, just sitting is the same as “7 mac 11s” because swords (or firearms) are only metaphors for the discipline of mind that cuts through all illusions to realize the essence of mind, i.e. tathata (thusness). The tathata that is called tathata is not tathata at all (for it is merely a concept; discrimination persists if one remains attached to notions like tathata or “357 bitches”).
Biggie asserts what could be seen as dragon-cub words here:
Biggie: Oh my god, I’m droppin shit like a pigeon, I hope you’re listening, smacking babies at their Christianing…
Comment: Master Joshu says to one who asks what Zen means, “go and wash your bowl.” Now one must forget this example. If the 5th patriarch, Hui Neng, referred inquisitors of graphic questions to their “original face,” and other masters, their “face before their parents were born,” then we can simply dispense with pleasantries and smack babies as they are “christianed.” To live a realized life is all that is necessary. Just be upright and look at everything as it is and worry little about past and future. When babies are being initiated, smack them and be blameless. That is the whole meaning of the universe. Forget the dangerous notion of “universe,” too.
2Pac: No matter how you chuck, niggaz never die, we just retaliate with hate, then we multiply…
Comment: Master Confucius, reflecting on the expectations of authoritative people, reflected thus: “What has a person who is not authoritative got to do with observing ritual propriety? What has a person who is not authoritative got to do with the playing of music?”
Meanwhile, ChuangTzu was dismissive of authority, and introduced to us the notion of the “true man with no rank.” Others have identified that phrase with suchness, original being, and true humility. This debate is meaningless here.
If one is to “retaliate with hate,” the three-fold world (greed, anger, and delusion) can hardly be expected to descend from the horizon of existence anytime soon. Therefore Confucius is valid to question the correctness of 2Pac’s involvement with the playing of music, since in reinforcing hatred he can hardly be observing ritual propriety.
Yet Siddharta offered that ignorance is suffering, desire is suffering, the first and second “noble truths” being what we don’t like to see in our lives. Dukkha is another word for stress. We do not want stressful lives, not even if we happen to be ants or flies. So against this stress we might be seen to be “retaliating with hate.” Here of course hatred is not reified in terms of the fire that burns the house of existence, but rather as the motivator for those who seek wisdom, the first kernel of human sensitivity.
When people talk to other people about human sensitivity, human sensitivity might be seen to multiply. Then the human condition changes; 7 mac 11s become swords of wisdom, 357 bitches become mountains and rivers seen exactly as they are; and finally newborn children are smacked by their parents in a courtyard at Prospect Park, just for the hell of it, and to introduce children to the pain that burns all the world.
Thus, the Dharmakhaya (all that is, the known universe) is seen with open eyes when freestyles are spat and shoulders shake, beats dropped, tracks baked. Heads bop, then detach from the rhythm to find the meaning. 2Pac and Biggie thus find continuation of life in canned tracks, holding macs to the temple of suffering, if one chooses to see it that way.
Satori comes and goes for the unenlightened; I skipped capoeira to write this.
LankavataraSutra: “Those who regard the removers of obstruction [i.e., Buddhas] as neither destroyed nor departed for ever, like the sands of the Ganges, see the Tathata.” 202
Yoga Sutra (Patanjali): “The eight limbs of yoga are moral principles, observances, posture, breath control, withdrawal of the senses, concentration, meditation, and pure contemplation.” 52
Raekwon: “That’s that fire move like Schwinns, yo, invisible pens that write light, leave blends, hit with the JF Kennedy shot, smash with the Acupulco rifle got got, bolt off but got clocked.” 500
Uhuru Afrikans and Guests,
This blog continues from other blogs of mine to focus on the study of hip hop and contemporary world culture and arts from a youth Pan-Afrikan Marxist-Fanonian literary perspective. I aim to be simple and to the point and to relate ideas explored to the reality at hand, as KRS-ONE stipulates among his own theories of hip hop. My own creative works may be highlighted here as well. Look out for some things.
Fully Fighting (Frantz Fanon)
Frantz Fanon said:
The colonized man who writes for his people ought to use the past with the intention of opening the future, as an invitation to action and a basis for hope. But to ensure that hope and to give it form, he must take part in action and throw himself body and soul into the national struggle. You may speak about everything under the sun; but when you decide to speak of that unique thing in man's life that is represented by the fact of opening up new horizons, by bringing light to your own country, and by raising yourself and your people to their feet, then you must collaborate on the physical plane.
-The Wretched of the Earth: "On National Culture"
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