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!
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