Wisdom to the Child

“Issa” Clip de Dobet Gnahoré�
Uploaded by Contre-Jour

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!

Post-Colonial Boogie

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!