We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Red, White and You (Finger Pointing)

from RESPECT THE BEARD: SPOKEN SOUL by Jabulani Leffall

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.
    Purchasable with gift card

      name your price

     

about

Sylvester Thompson is from Holly Springs, Mississippi, United States, he migrated with his family to Chicago in 1950. Jabulani Leffall is from Los Angeles California and migrated to Chicago in 1991. Blues and Soul speak across generation. This provocative poem/personal manifesto gives a nod to Gil Scott Heron and a shout out to Sekou Sundiata and serves as a tough love letter to the country that birthed Sylvester Thompson who later became Syl Johnson and sings of his hollow bones and wonders why his dreams never came true. Over his soulful riffs, Red, White and You coasts to hopefully an honest conversation about the direction of our country.

lyrics

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.

credits

from RESPECT THE BEARD: SPOKEN SOUL, released January 1, 2013
Syl Johnson ( Is It Because I'm Black?) Words and Vocals by Jabulani

license

tags

about

Jabulani Kansas City, Missouri

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.
... more

contact / help

Contact Jabulani

Streaming and
Download help

Report this track or account

Jabulani recommends:

If you like Jabulani, you may also like: