RESPECT THE BEARD: SPOKEN SOUL
by Jabulani Leffall
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Digital Album
Immediate download of 11-track album in your choice of high-quality MP3, FLAC, or just about any other format you could possibly desire.Buy Now name your price
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Jabulani - Lazer Birds
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Presently Space Echo
04:45
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Shebegone (Blue Skit)
02:38
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Sweet Interstices
04:18
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about
Writer, visual artist, singer-songwriter, beat poet and broadcaster Jabulani Leffall, presents his debut digital album and media convergence project tilted "Respect the Beard: Spoken Soul."
credits
released 01 January 2013
Executive Producers Miles Bonny and Jabulani Leffall. Production by Shinobi Evil Eye. Vocals, Lyrics and Verse by Jabulani.
Executive Producers Miles Bonny and Jabulani Leffall. Production by Shinobi Evil Eye. Vocals, Lyrics and Verse by Jabulani.
tags
license
Some rights reserved. Please refer to individual track pages for license info.
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feeds for about
Jabulani is also an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and writer who attended Journalism School at the University of
Missouri.
Currently he is the host of Central Standard, a general interest radio talk show on KCUR 89.3 FM, a super-regional National Public Radio member station based in Kansas City. The show reaches listeners in Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Northern Arkansas.
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contact / help
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For all other inquiries, click here.
- Track Name: Jabulani - Lazer Birds
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She wonders aloud in the live of night wishing…
The window was bigger.
Amid intermittent orange glowing, nascent smoke, ancient sweat, she wants a bigger window.
Their wave of gnashed teeth, blue tides, waiting and wading pools…see life…like the ocean.
With yoga and meditation there are no guarantees, but six sixth days in a row…
The beautiful game, hot pokers and honeycombs, pagotas, forest paths and wood chapels…long trombones and stolen kisses…bulls that want to go home…..
Something’s gonna happen.
She didn't believe any eels were in the pool until she saw with her own eyes, long ominous, predatory, freightening...supremely arousing in afterthought.
She doesn't know he knew and she likes that.
Music feels the air with anatomical instruments, improvising, rising, falling…..fallen..... grunts like a Greek myth…Pandora’s box for three rounds.
Phantom appendages touch where bodies dare to dance.
Curse words echo on the prairie, first floor back window, second floor, take the stairs.
Three digits and you have a new meaning of Finger Lakes, the geography of velvet tongues, cartography of the caress.
He can’t know her anymore than this, she leads him by hand out of the door of perception.
Then the silence of a closed book after reading.
The glow of pain so beautiful that there’s everything to say and nothing to speak.
Could it be that the sun also gets on Saturday’s nerves?
Whispers of…….. did you know?
Unseen but heard they appear on cue, becoming an audible inside joke and the question becomes: who is really beaming?
They both walk on jagged rocks now, they both know what it means to be back from space.
Hello, Goodbye, build you a house of wood, incinerated by laser beams.
He replaces the fitted sheet, if only because they will always have “Paris.” - Track Name: Simplistix (The Green Team)
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Five four three, two and we’re on.
Excuse me, allow me to be, if you will Frank with you…
Better yet Francis.
Sir Drake or Sir, who brought home the bacon..
Ever since then, we pigged out on the supposition that we could cheat on
Andrew, Hugo, Katrina, Sandy and them….ask them…
Is somebody following you baby, because I’m seeing someone behind your back…
Cruel, curious, complex, convex, E equals two people on a mic. So what’s next…
Playin tricks on mother, knowing her ways, her tendencies, facial expressions, quirks, idiosyncrasies, out of synchronicity, you know relyin’ on human Nature Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?
Keep it simple stupid (3x)
Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, are you trying to steal your Father’s Wristwatch, knowin that it’s a social construct………..Time is money and money is time, and honey is fine, unless you call it be vomit.
Pentamic Perameters, Poetry in motion, supersonic sonnets, that’s closer…………………………IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIi….
On observation instantaneous realism, realistic, while we labels our fables, demystifying the mysteries and mocking the mystics……what I’m sayin’ baby is you can give me sugar, without the lipstick.
One person, one thing at a time, one reason, one rhyme, one individual mountain climb I’mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Of the opinion that multi-tasking, is like multi-vitamins, multi-media, multi-faceted, multi-sultry, multi-somber, multi-imperialistic (WOW)…..is that civilizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzeeeed?
Start back at one, since your engine is runnin’ on pal eolithic, bones and protiens, broke down to liquid, so you can shift your stick shift, go buy a tank top and some biscuits…..Whyyyyyyyyyyyy….
You askin’ me about a copyright eliminate all your functions wake up and have a coffee night…………………..IIIIIIIIIIIIII.
Ask myself if everything was gone to tomorrow, would I beg steal or borrow, air on the side of conditioning, or turn the heat up make my mind sweat, reinvent the wheel of fire… - Track Name: Plain Ol' Paris (Jab's Theme)
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You I knew before as a young man, I must’ve seen you about 70 times west.
You hear stories, you see brown curves you see brown eyes, familiarity.
Affinity grows like the elms and birch and dogwood we sat next to and under.
Long stretches of picturesque, highway and bi-way, your way and my way
You insulated me at first with morning dew, catching my breath, sometimes you were behind, sometimes you were in front, sexy in any case.
We made beautiful music together, stillness, quiet, whether it was snow angles or mosquitoes feasting on supple damp, summer drenched skin.
You were a hub, once for lots of people, then you were my hub and I was your hub, frozen in time on majestic museum steps.
Moments that felt like forever.
I’m slippin’ in the prairie now.
Then it was with you, that I find out why the caged Bird played so well, why the Paige turned and how you would weigh down the Satchel I would have to carry.
What brings you up, brings you down, what makes you laugh also makes your shoulder shrug, shudder in bitter, bitter salt falling from the eyes, misery pronounced a different way.
Now I know all of you.
Boulevards grow wider and I get tanked at 7, then on til two in the morning bar patrons, cheering, screaming, devoted to Monarchy and Native Americans.
Blues is no longer just music, Jazz is no longer just the sound.
You appeared unto me at night and forced genre into my body and soul, made me live it, making me livid, made me traverse what the Dutch called the opposite of a lie, alone.
Crackling vinyl, dingy animation in black and white. I loved saying Good morning to you and only you, the first and last.
Now I was searing two sides of a candle, the real definition of burnt ends, I can see it on your faces, must be why it smells so good.
Must be that Be-Bop Blood, those leaves, witnesses to the navy knots on those branches, still swing, the freight snake still whistles at midnight, coming and going.
You are my sweetheart from the bottoms to the top, east to west, you will be that until I go to the Crossroads one last time, that last Friday.
That first Saturday, those weekends were never the same after the MKT track was decommissioned, a trail left in its wake, that I still try to find you on.
You made me more well-known than I was and as anonymous as I ever will be.
Huffing and puffing and blowing my house down, emaciated while stuffed in the city of food, fountains and found, lost,,.,forever.
Look Daddy, there goes the train, there’s the biggie biggie bus…I’m Maxed out now, loose in the park, forever running.
Why did you have to go and turn me into an artist, why did you build me up so quick and let me down so hard, why did I do the same to you.? What did we learn about each other?
Where’s Waldo? Probably off the trail, getting some Pizza, after a Quick Trip to the gas station.
I can’t throw a rock, take a breath, bat an eye, take a step, without hearing horns and smelling blue smoke and salty rub flakes…
I’m home, I’m gone.
I’m here, I left.
I went, I stayed.
This is my theme, you taught me, you teach me, who I was, am is…(2X)
Remind me to remind you to blame me for thanking you…
Kansas…. City, by the river
Kansas….City, Kansas City, Kansas………City, town…state of mine and mind, Hello and Goodbye, Night and Day…..No one will have to tell you don’t ever change.
You drew me here and there.
Now I draw you unto me, abstractly.
We’re on a plateau now, the music plays on all night, it’s the foundation and the feeling is mutual, the room is blue, the world is yours, which is why you, which is why you, which is why you….. gave it back.
Stay, leave, be…your plains, beautiful self, look up,… I said look up, someone’s…. coming… through. - Track Name: Presently Space Echo
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Right now I’m thinking about thinking.
In this moment I am still and active.
She is all that is on my mind and she is here and gone….now.
I’m on the cusp, in this moment, of total destruction and one-hundred percent recovery.
I’m blocked as a snotty nose, also allergic to stagnation.
Right now is everything and nothing.
Thoughts are racing, ruminations are stuck at a red light.
There is no yesterday and no tomorrow.
Things now have no name, there’s no light in here…now darkness.
There is no justice and no injustice.
The immediacy is the fairest thing of all.
There’s nothing happening yet nothing is standing still, nothing held back, everything……moving.
I’d love to touch the horizon, I’d love to fall deep into the depths of the suffering I imagine…impale myself now on eternity.
Eternity…just a minute ago.
Infinite sub-atomic fractions, scream you don’t know shit….stars say you know everything….dust.
I imagine it and it scoops and scrapes, contorts and shapes, cooks and bakes… without expectation.
This is not what you think it is, it is in fact everything you thought it would be, everything you said it would be. Now.
I would add to that: expectations are illusory at most and probability at best. The unexpected is certain.
If you knew, would you go? And do you know, that knowing doesn’t make this now and doesn’t make the then be then either?
Everything is conscious and unconsciousness is nothing so watch matter and anti-matter do a tango to that.
Watch that stick, beat that snare, that rim, that shot that bee that bop, bounce that off the satellite, listen and hope…just be there.
Like I am…here, not deep, not shallow, not vast just the whole universe is all.
I am the one, just like you.
I’m born now, I died then…ain’t that groovy, put the quarter in the slot and ask yourself: who, now and what, now?
That’s instead of what, now? And you said what now?
It’s kind of like whose on first if you ponder the seconds, you’ll get that then.
Taste the dimension with each oxygen laced pull: photosynthetic in the dark of night.
You get it when you think about what the teacher asked of you when the teacher called your name…to be counted…you said…
Here.
Present.
And you were and are both? - Track Name: Red, White and You (Finger Pointing)
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No more of a declarative utterance than “I am.”
Culture, ideals and repetition bleed into the carbon-based life form and that utterance propagates goes viral.
I am America, having almost drowned in the Pacific, having dipped in that Atlantic, having proselytized in the Gulf.
I am the promise and the break, leveraged to the hilt and bored to tears, that no longer come.
Numb.
I am the pretender, the smiling smiler, saddled with debt, waiting, earning, pilfering, spending, unconsciously now.
I am the man and country, with more information and less knowledge and almost no applied Wisdom.
I am the land after time.
I am the America that earns less than my parents and sometimes simply stares at my children, in admiration, in anxiety, sometimes even posthumously.
I am the America, hoping at once for a white-knight blessing to bring me the euphoria that every one else strives for, baying at the moon to procure the steely-eyed reserve only calamity can bring.
White knights, weren’t exactly a blessing for me, especially on White nights, I’m that America too.
Tis why I wait for my comeuppance and pray for forgiveness, all the while shrugging my shoulders as if I did nothing wrong.
Passing the buck has a million meanings for me, especially in this drought -- from see to shining see.
I am the America where bills are no longer legislative documents; they come directly to me, faster than my recompense, amber waves of pain, shame and blame.
There’s no more college for me in America, electoral or otherwise, just school…but like fish, that wander the weary deep…searching.
Individualism isn’t rugged for me anymore, just lonely, just desolate, the inevitable Rome.
I’m the America that says, not me, that was them that did that, them that dropped those bombs, them that waived those fire hoses, fronted and backed those coups…them, not me.
Like the American preacher says, one goes out, three point back at me and I am them and they are me…finger pointed in, of, about….America.
I’m the America that prays on bleeding bended knee for that quick death, that sudden birth, that wonderful light, the true feeling of the quilled ink on the parchment…anything but this office park I’m pulling up to.
I’m the America, bathed in opulence, pretending I don’t want unlimited credit at Saks, but staring at the ads anyway, blaming the rich for being so, sneering at the poor, when I am both…rich in legacy, poor in spirit.
I am the glass half empty, half full America when in fact my cup runneth over with increasingly depleted water sources.
Anoint my head with oil, the trade that I sanction so I can drive two miles to the grocery store and watch the rest, hemorrhage in a deep water horizon…… Indifferent.
Yeah I’m THAT America too, allusions that are really just plagiarism, a wheel that was already there but now with shiny, expensive rims on it…
I am injustice on stolen land.
I eschew the necessary for the opposite, I buy what I want and beg for what I need….I am America.
I am, most of all, still free to live within myself and still say, you know what, fuck myself, love myself, hate myself, with my Pizza, baseball, tailgating, obesity, homegrown whiskey, trending activism, loudness, boldness and apathy passed off as…well….. unearned cool.
I got mine coming, one day, but right now I’m still No. 1, I dare you to say I’m not, because in fact…. I am……
America. - Track Name: Sweet Interstices
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Hoppin, skippin, runnin round and fallin’ in love…
Fallen…
Fall into winter out of Autumn…
In connectivity constantly, with call drops of locution…
I heard someone in that dead air, heard say poetry is dead…
My reply, a sigh, a shrug and the answer: maybe, except when owning choices and sharing accountability….
Keep fallen on my head, could this be that domed sound…moving out of the mental booth where we’re hearing our own voice…
It’s the internal dialogue that gets us in trouble….every time…
He’s wondering should he take it upon himself, to take the keys, or ask like a gentleman..
He knows no one is safe from external elements and that the quest for the hot spot, between…absence and immersion is the real deal…
Falling….
In the meantime in between time (3X)
Mean, meaning, averages…we are conduits betwixt mathematics and statistics…the ethereal simplistic…
How can we make each other happy, and even further, farther better longer…PRO-Lific
How hungry are you?
Sew the wind and reap the world wind, whirlwind, from whirling Dervishes, whirled in….they surface…
We strive to find that purpose….Awww yeahh, right there.
Extra Virgin, Olive Oil of Olay, lyrical, hemispherical matadors…with the hubris and presumption of a meteorological forecast.
Stuck in traffic, not wondering or asking if the hidden sun ever says you owe me, if the sky gets pissed off…because it has to wait in line.
So wet, I live for this shit…that’s why my viewmaster gets stuck in a flash…
We feel the firmament gash….and laugh…
Funny how you can’t see thunder or hear lightening but we feel both, try to bottle and sell, steal both…
Let’s sit in the ride, Double Entendre-rific….
In the meantime in between time (3X)
Mean, meaning, averages…we are conduits betwixt mathematics and statistics…the ethereal simplistic…
How can we make each other happy, and even further, farther better longer…PRO-Lific
Lord said, stop wallowing in that sad music…
Unconquerable I, in the eye of the storm, rebuttal to the most high…
I know. But Got Damn: GOD. I love this song.
Ladies and Gentleman, the fabulous Dramatics. - Track Name: Bonus: A Blues Man: Extremes
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“A Blues Man: Extremes”
A Blues man either is or ain’t.
A Blues man don’t drink socially.
A Blues man gets his clues, rhythms and instructions from haints…
For a Blues man prefers notoriety, locally.
It’s Jim, Jack and Johnny, the three wise men instead of pro-zac
Instead of couch, it’s the party pills, the weed, the crack….
and I ain’t talkin’ bout base baking soda neither, I’m talking bout that crack but there is some coca-cola along the lines…
Glass tables.
A Blues man lives within himself, himself lives within.
A Blues man ain’t just a man, ain’t just black.
A Blues man don’t believe in healing, just leaving.
A Blues man needs to feign suicide to live.
A Blues man don’t need no music only feelin’..
A Blues man never pays his bills on time, but always makes a killin.
Instead of stardust, he’s made of blood, sweat, tears.
He remembers dates by numbers of whiskey, wines and beers, not years.
He thinks everybody loves him, he thinks nobody loves him.
He’s a walking ball of organized fear, but it ain’t scared of nothin’.
He sings into a can and people listen but not hear, hear but not listen.
All the way back to the pews just to forget church, a blues man worships firm breast glistening, tongues of pearl, beeds of sweet, trees of knowledge…hissing.
A Blues man is a pariah, baptized by fire.
Sometimes he’s everybody, same times he’s no one.
Sometimes heaven says you ain’t clean and complete enough, sometimes hell says you too dirty even for us.
The middle ground, is red dusty clay, sawdust, sticky linoleum, dry-rote wood, slick ballroom floors, black-ass-black asphalt….
He’s the only one who knows, the smirk, everyone else think’s the end product, the whining, call and response effect…..is so cool.
Sometimes, he’s everybody, sometimes he’s no one.
