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State: California
Country: US
Signup Date: 8/18/2006
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Tuesday, March 17, 2009
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Category: Music
THE SISYPHUS REVUE, A BOP OPERA
As part of the history of the United States, there is a sort of
recurring and laborious movement of time endured by Blacks. Every time
they win a battle, they lose it again a few years later. Like an
eternal starting over…
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois calls that the Sisyphus Syndrome.
Dubois, a major African-American activist known for fighting all forms
of racism and discrimination and a founding member of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP – the largest
and oldest civil-rights organization in the United States), said that
the struggle for the liberation of Afro-Americans could be defined in
the same way as the Greek myth of Sisyphus. In that tale, the son of
the Wind God, Sisyphus of Corinth was condemned to death, but when deal
came to find him, he resisted, claiming he saw no reason why he should
have to meet that end when he was still young and strong. The Gods then
punished the impetuous Sisyphus. The famous king, too avid and greedy,
was condemned for eternity to push a heavy rock towards the top of a
mountain that he could never reach, because the rock would always fall
back down before it reached its goal.
“Dubois was saying that every time Black Americans succeeded
in rolling the rock of what is represented by civil-rights equality to
the top of the mountain, the cruel gods always pushed that rock down
the mountain, so that Sisyphus’s people had to start the struggle over
and over again.” As if “the gods” added to the weight of this rock
segregation, discrimination, the Jim Crow laws (which strengthened the
old slave culture of the Southern States) and the Ku Klux Klan.
I therefore tried to isolate the historic tendencies of the struggle
movements acting positively and those marked by tragic defeats for
black people. So the end of the anti-slavery struggle is logically a
part of an ascending tendency, while the founding of the Ku Klux Klan
or the Jim Crow laws are part of a backward movement. I envisioned this
work through the history of African Americans in the United States,
using key movements, events and characters in this history.”
Amiri Baraka and David Murray explore the contemporary aspects of the
Greek allegory of Sisyphus, symbolizing American society’s constant
struggle to maintain and develop the democratic space, and more
generally representing the fight of the “many” against the “few”…
Working on a selection of ten poems by Baraka, Murray has composed music that complements and gives life to this work.
The project was first presented at the East Side Center in Oakland,
California, in May 2008, with the composer and the poet in attendance.
A musical review was inspired by this initial stage, adding a chorus
out of the great singing tradition of the very Baptist Church of God of
Christ, which for the occasion will trade in its holy repertory for
these inspired by the poems of Amiri Baraka. The famous meeting of the
sacred and the profane.
LINE UP :
Amiri Baraka – poems and readings
David Murray – composition / direction, tenor sax, bass clarinet
Boots Riley – MC
Aamil Islam - Skeleton
Ranzel Merrit – drums
Jamaaladeen Tacuma – bass
Longineu Parsons – trumpet
Mingus Murray – guitar
Thorston Hudson Jr. – organ
The Deep River Gospel Choir – choir
Links to the official extracts from "The Sisyphus Revue - A Bop Opera" by Amiri Baraka, music by David Murray:
AMIRI BARAKA
THE GOD OF PAIN (Dr. Du Bois’ Song from The Sisyphus Syndrome)
There is a creature called The God of Pain who hovers dead above us, but lives as the twisted frown of a mask Not a fallen angel, but a twisted angle The life of the up side down. The reflection of life that only exists because of what is real The No that lives with Yes, the Down that clings To Up, the death knell sealed in the baby’s wail The evil that is the backwardness of its own name. Falling out of the sky, called the fall of man was The rising of what shd be dead, what has died, but Lives as the unclarity un- resolved memorized evil Of the tortuous climb up the ladder of all good change. The beasts the bush savages that fight against the coming Of humanity, like the beasts who refused to climb the tree Of life and thus look at the sky and see the beyond and all that we all will be, where we had paws we made hands Where before we had growls so we made the A the E the I the O the U, & the DO the RE the MI the FA the SOL, till we cd sit with our family in the tree of our humanity and laugh at the beasts on all fours on the ground, who wd never stand erect, never see the stars, the distant oceans, wd never talk and sing! And in the ark of our rising, the beast was its reflected opposite And what it could not do, it wd hate, and turn the bread of life Into Pain.
DEAD PREZ
Lincoln was murdered Kennedy too & after Each time there was a Vicecracker Name Johnson, took over The Crime ! John/ son, the head’s chile The toilet’s baby The bathroom’s boy Son of the Shit house Born in the Men’s Room You cd always tell where they be Place start smellin like doo doo and pee They open they mouth to talk and such You know somebody forgot to flush House Dicks Like Nixon who approved Aids as Population Stabilization His name was his game, Nix On, so the jigs cant turn Like Monk and dig they soul, the sun. Whose Johnson was they Lynchem and Andy J Andy, young monopoly’s pecker Would have been a hero If they had impeached him But he was the doodle imperialism wacked With a ripped rubber dunce hat over his lips Which only allowed drips From his unattractive Coming. The poor whites waited Happy that niggers was hated But when they put the boohoo on they face They was so sorry, they still thought it was about race Was these house dicks for the poor whites Oh No Oh No Was they against the niggers Oh Yeh Oh Yeh Aint nuthin gonna change this nation North or south, until some people Figure this out. Its hard to figure Why some folks cant tell Roy Rogers From Trigger And with each of them Our future got more grim And whatever they said What ever we read We could feel, wasn’t real They worked even harder than the dead For the big dog instead So what was the link Between JFK & ABE what sealed their mutual fate hooked up their actual doom ? Now everyone together say Negroes If you ask both house dicks And the horde of ignorant Americans They might say it this way Both guys made too ùany mistakes In dealing with the benighted snakes And got wasted by god or you know whooooo Dr King The same thing & Malcolm X too all wasted by we know who (Spoken and Sung like a Round) THERE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A SECRET GOVERNMENT In this Nation Who rule by lie, trick, bribe And assassination We was the tricks In the Florida Coup Reincarnated a son of a bush As Jeb, a confederate general To overthrew the union So the south cd rise again All made possible By we know whoooo & CIA Black ops was used the cops & low life stooges so the far right cd advance while covering the crime with the dance of Tom Ass Clarence in a classic house Negro
trance, used to be called the jerk but it was more democracy since in the worst hypocrisy it was not only black folks who was sold but whitey should be told that he was equally sold out too. Is Clarence a Negro or an N-word ?
THE STONE FORCED UP
The stone forced up By your desire Then at the peak The goal you seek Cannot be reached The stone hurled back Into your teeth & now the air Atop the Mount is torn apart And like a fount rings an+ insane cry the laugh of the beast DON’T CALL ME OUT MY NAME ONLY THING I HATE WORSE THAN GOOD IS YOU, I AM THE ANGEL OF PAIN !
I AM THE ANGEL OF PAIN !
SAY GOOD BY TO THE DEADSay Goodbye To The Dead The Good Dr sayAs he reflectedOne dayThe majorityof the world is coloredAnd the future of the world Is what colored people Do and sayIf that is thrillingThat we gon’ be hereDespite the great beastKilling Then say, « Oh yeh, that’s right ! » We is the majority of humanityAnd we gonna fight (x4) But be that as it isAs long as it stayThe world, oh enemyAint always gonna be that way Nothing, except the Tons of bull dookeyYou got soaking of the world With lies You already got sea ofWords hiding and covering your crimesGiving you disguise But be that as it isAs long as it stayThe world, oh enemyAint always gonna be that way (x2) One day you will knowOne day we’ll make certainYou got to go !Oh NOThat’s where it’s atOne day you gonna get your hat !Or NO, you got to go OH YEH, OH NO !
THE HARLEM RENAISSANCEWas a name they gave To our confirmation The rejuvenation The 20th century entrance Of the Afro American Nation
Why, They said « Good Bye !»To us, from The Devil’s bandThought we’d get wasted By Slavery and the KlanThat they could wipe us outBlack children, woman and man But we too old to go like thatWe was slaves before they was even whiteAnd them ancient slave makers Ain’t in sight We was slaves, yeh, and down on our knees, How many times in bondage how many timesHad to fight to get free They say what goes upMust come downYou was laughing beforeNow you frown But what is trueWhat must be learnedIs no matterThe defeatThe tragicDownturnWe still get strongerStronger than we wasWe still come backOur strength returned So aint no futureOf permanent losingThey tells you that to plant confusion Unite don’t splitDon’t conspire and intrigueBe Open and Above BoardI got that from the Chinese History is a mammy jammerOur story a tale of turmoil and drama The future belong to those who will beAt one with the world of humanity Those who propose to enslave the worldVery soon will be tryingTo climb out of the hellWhere they have been hurled The People surge upwardHeld back by backwardOnly a beat or two Our story is longStruggle not new « Unite the Manyto Defeat the Few ! »
UNITED FRONT SONGWhat why what why why why What why what whyThat we can’t stand by that we can’t uniteTwo giants of the the raceWho seldom spoke face to faceWhat why is that that makes it like that what whyIs it like you and I, you nationalistYou socialist, you Christian, you Muslim, what why, you black Jew, I can’t get along with you ? You Democrat Negro, RepublicanYou intellectual, you activist, you moor, you father divine, We can fight all the time, but why can’t we talk, why can’t we walkYou preacher, you miner, you truck driver, you teacher, you dock worker, you social worker, youUnion brother sister, why do we resist us, Like Great Garvey and DuBoisMalcolm and Dr King, would they could embrace, for the strength and futureOf the race. What they said what they did, in their heroic livesFor whatever they did huntHow much stronger would we beWith a black united front !! (vamp) So we struggle to unbuckle the chains of slavery discrimination the racismOf national oppression, for if we are a nation, then the most basic foundation,Is that unity in struggle, that unity to struggle, that political basic needFor our struggle to free us that unity of focus, not monolithic, but a Unity around issues, a unity based on struggle, not uniformity but principleYeh we’ll argue without lies, and won’t have to compromise, but in our freedomHunt there is one factor that must precede is a black united front.
THE UP & DOWN OF BLACKNESS
This morning we sad thinking of what we thought We had & so the Stone rolls back, from the power of the Devil’s counter attack But see, no one else will be responsible for our Lives but we The Masks of Life with us beyond time & eternity One a smile, the other a frown Just when we turn our path, our being off the ground The Devil at the top, force the rise to stop & our happy face reverse back to a frown Remember then what the old folks say « I may be wrong but I won’t be wrong Always The sun gone shine in my back door One day ! »
RENAISSANCE GONE
The Renaissance ended on dead out lived What hear ye then, the sound of splitting money, Coin, join was it whether a spot a what Perhaps- But at the market, fishy, at the empty Waving merely wishy. Love something now You can touch the why why cryin’ We stand or was you under that Shadow bridge learning Disaster ? Who asked was Recoming becoming you are uncertain & so what is clear appears It’s a dead thing. How can it fight ? The dead fight best they have no fear. They already dead. That is their strength You know that veil, yet can’t dis your fear A saw, garbage can ventriloquist with No legs, instilling its smell as begs we remember, nothing but desire And the old black ditch where There was fire. But that was higher We was earlier new matches But if there is still alive in you What brought you greenly what Blew, the world inside you Stuttering to recall itself as something We knew. Perhaps. We put on the black face The way of He who can be slapped. That’s coins falling through the sky Millions of flaming devils
Dr. Jeckyl mocking shekels Need the books clout inside The deluge. The crime, the The gift, the time. Awake dreaming Silent screaming, a prison Of scheming, you Shine, where is Your gleaming, what gives with Your people, your roll up Your thousand dances Your dittoed towers Your thought up power Your visionaries, your triumphs Your tongues, Your Hypnotic
Gestures, your Sambos & &Lothars are they You when you arrive, out of breath Dead on your feet, whipped, pooped Your heart gone to college, your Soul sold with your knowledge I love you for real I still love you, man If I could only find you If I only had a mind to If I only wanted to laugh again If I still remember how to sing If I was still I if youcould Remember Why Why we loved each other Why we needed each other Why we could be each other Why we got removed from Ourselves, got split, got Bit, hit, quit, pouted Growled in the dumbness Of last last our victory shouted That’s money, coins & kings, ethnic Confusion, books paid with confusion John on the island, screaming in Silence. The three horses comin’ Over our head, the one fixed above Us looks like a cloud, a crowd, An arrow, A cross bow, a King, a A boat, an absence, a concert, a Curtsy, a question A quest shunned A who, spinning A raped city A theory W/ 3 legged 2 headed Rushing above us & going No more rains only colored knees The color of nothing The whooo whoosh wailin Oh hoof beats hoof beats & we thought it was just the radio, Vaughan Monroe singing Ghost Riders In The sky When we got older That make believe ballroom Could make us cry. Again Again Again Why It’s Hitler -No It’s Hitler -So What It’s Hitler -Hey, Mussolini ! It’s Hitler -Bilbo Stennis It’s Hitler -Yellow Menace It’s Hitler -Mississippi It’s Hitler -Oh, Eastland It’s Hitler -Plantation to Concentration It’s Hitler -Black You & The Jew It’s Hitler -V for Victory in Europe Double V For over here too ! It’s Hitler -Alabama It’s Hitler -Auschwitz near Atlanta It’s Hitler -But Duke just left It’s Hitler -What that mean ? It’s Hitler -911 at the Reichstag in 1933 It’s Hitler -1939 It’s Hitler -Ask Auden It’s Hitler -When do we fight ? It’s Hitler Born in America Got famous in Europe Killing Niggers ain’t nothing But he start killing Jews It got to be news It’s Hitler -Not just one Dude It’s Hitler -Krupp, Farben, Volkswagen, Dulles & Lindberg It’s Hitler -The Hitler arrived like he grew On a tree That was back in the thirties But that was not the end Fascism in America Has a different Name The American word for Nazi Is American (But the meaning still the same) & that hanging tree the Fuhrer grew on got burned to the ground But look again by us grows An ugly Bush Turned that maniacal Nazi sound To a hush But now if you listen & look Near by us There is growing A hideous Sieg Heil Bush
NOTE TO BE PASSED FROM SWEATY HANDS
Beware these fake distances These sectarian boxes Resemble coffins If we are correct Let it also save Our neck, do not be So correct, suicide Is your reward We said, if we could, to Liebnecht & Luxembourg fleeing the Social Democrats with more energy than the garbage on fire eyes of the padded cell nut who approaches to kill you both.
KNEW NEST
We thot they was magic We thot they was ghosts We thot they had copped us To make us a meal How wrong you can be & still be right We thot they could pull off they skin That’s why they was white So when yo boy JJ return We thot he was us & we couldn’t get burned How right you can be & still be wrong The cracker didn’t eat us But he tried to The Negro lie & betray us Made us cry too How right you can be & be wrong or wrong you can be & be right got no never more horizon to cop no destiny by a midget hide in the sky no remorse which is money&shiny bone No loss, no death, no smile, no Jive heaven child Just yo self peepa black colored Negro Just we self us & them, you & me & them, all all (who aint eat child the criminal bush cannibal vampire all color except hate blank none swell all language, except BS the unkempt gibber devil all place, except hell bomb square lame town all mind, except No Mind All soul, except No soul or sould out All size, shape, gender, splendor, talk, sing, dance All what is what do be happy live is The truth & beauty. All Truth All Beauty A Woman, A Man, A Child, A Whooooooooo
WHY OUR LIVES (The song of The Sisyphus)
When they kill our leaders, divide The rest, the world ain’t over It’s just a test
We were full of the joy of struggle When we forced the huge stone up the mountain high Young people felt immortal We felt so strong we could never die
But the trick of the world is rhythm The space between worlds Like the chasm between Be & At As old as we are we were halted Old as we are we went For that.
But we are a line of infinity Our faces change like places Our being transform like Time & space
But the Blue Streak of coming The Black past of our always home The journey through life’s spectrum Our touching of the coming and the unknown Speaks to the everness of our being The neverness of the not, The world of time without end
You minds and souls of the Wholly World You presences & images & ultimate matter Of what is, you are the was, the is, & The will be.
As you pass sing for us that song Of ourselves. As you rise & change With the moon & stars, the sweep Of where & when
The Hello, that rings through the everywhere The Hey Now! That robes whatever becomes The Blueness of coming The Greenness of Growing, The Red ness of Well. It’s all right, like you still so hip You go back to the Black, we hear you We hear ourselves, we is after all Everything Now & Will be. Is the UnAmericans The Real Americans ? (50’s Spike Jones Nonsense tune, with horns, whistles, gongs) In the fifties there was two famous dummies One was Charlie the other was Joe, Joe emerged like a Giant termite, to chew up the flag To a deadly white Our blood was evil Because it was Red And we ourselves is Blue So that had to be took out too The problem was the rise of democracy Fighting fascism in the second world war Exposed the American dream As White supremacy Imperialist ventriloquist Raised a red scare To cover a democracy that had never been there So our red allies in WW2 Were demonized by Flunky Media Before the bourgeoisie was through Some WACK politicians Stooging for the dead Attacked all who opposed them Accused them of Being Red Finally people began to see the strings in Joe’s wooden head & peeped the puppet master by where the strings led Joe was in the capitol, representing capital Crouching at his master’s feet Who pulled his strings directly from Wall Street Meanwhile the Hollywood Ten went to jail For making flicks that wouldn’t make you sick Dashell Hammet, the Thin Man searching for The Maltese Falcon was jailed because he was a private I Not public lie, Alphaeus Huton, Dr Du Bois’ man Got jumped when they busted the Dr and Robeson For refusing to deny that America was Poison The movies aint been much after that, and finks like Kazan, Got great careers and Larry Parks got paid to be Jolson Imitating the Darks They got people fired, got snitches hired, made punks out of erstwhile intellectuals Made haughty, academics quiet and ineffectual, Robeson under House Arrest, Du Bois passport seized, Richard Wright turned Right, Langston got shaky, Reagan Became an FBI informer, lobotomy for Frances Farmer, Zero Mostel, caught hell He wouldn’t tell, Lee J Cobb kneeled, Sterling Hayden squealed, Jackie Robinson Stole home by putting down Robeson, Canada Lee was blackballed he was already Black, it became a crime to think, they called it the Smith Act, so they cd send The CP leadership to jail. And skunks, and fools, and betrayers and naysayers, and Whores and Winchells, and Red Channels and Hiss dismissed, insanity passed for vanity, and knives were plunged into backs all across this land. And when the final Ugliness of this purge of democracy from the fake democracy plummeted to its Lowest there, they framed the Rosenbergs and had them murdered in the electric Chair. While the Bilboes and Ennises, and Thurmans and Stennises and Klans and Kleagles, and hideous fat appetites passing for human beings burped and farted And grinned and rested easy in their greasy. All the time lynching and beating and robbing and cheating and character Asassinating us and the poor and working people and truth And the country settled back, it thought, to an oatmeal constipation, a baldhead, half grin, toy soldier, who whispered military industrial complex just before he died To try to get into heaven. But as punishment his son married Nixon’s daughter, So God knew he lied. But that was not real, this tense gobbledygook puddle of America spelled mediocrity. The man in the Grey Flannel suit and Ike had been secretly feeling on other women. But the Reflection on Insurection, The Invisible Man from 54, was ultra violet, Began to appear viewed under certain instruments, the ultra violence of Mississipi Called money which is made by slaughtering niggers for rapping Miss America with They words they eyes they ideas they needs they existence. Emmett Till smashed Head in Jet, the undigested nigra hope answered with bullets and rope, a 13 year old Boy. Miss America’s uncle chose to destroy and we saw in that colored magazine That the cracker was evil and obscene and we declared war somewhere in our places On the enemies of sweetness and cool, the barbarian vandals who had sworn to make Out lives always and forever their commode fill, whose laughter was always a beacon Of terror whose fatness or wealth or cribs or rides or degrees or ease had always Been scars on our consciousness. Whose haughty insincerity even while being kind Was nothing but a minstrel show If only we would kill, but we would not, we are too old, too advanced in life to be Murderers, otherwise they would be memories even to themselves. But we hum We watch. Our eyes swing, our hands sometimes tremble, we stumble, we throw the Hook shot, slide into second, touch each other and laugh, pray inside ourselves that we Will not have to take these maniacs’ lives.
RUN UP THE MOUNTAIN (SISYPHUS BOP)
Don’t be ‘fraid The Beast is never strong As he said Charge into your future Of destiny to come Don’t hesitate Submit or succumb We are the world of what’s Coming into being It is a new life You fee and be Seeing Don’t doubt your strength Or the wisdom of your heart Resist Triple Six & his Mulitple faces, Don’t Believe Or be tricked by the Slickest of Racists We are the people who Created civilization Now our highest art Is to make the world One Nation ! Go On, fly if you need, Climb, walk Run, Fight, Rush To the height, stalk, talk, do what Is Just, Swing, Sing, do what we must There is nothing more noble than humanity’s Being, re-being, go higher, on fire, the Sky past desire, move fast, sail wail Stay up, out last, educate, mobilize Don’t let ourselves be trivialized Get in, Get out, make a fist, just insist Look out, See in, speak to all, never fall The road is long the path zigs and zags Some who are friends might become drags Be clear on what you hear, be certain What you see, always know your enemies As well as you know your friends. Don’t be slow, but don’t be too fast, it’s A protracted struggle, we got to last But learn the world, and all its looks Be able to distinguish the wise from the crooks Learn from every thing, the sky, the earth, The people, animals, and the church Listen to people who work every day. Listen to what everybody tell you For free, they not getting paid. Learn From every, watch the moon & read books, look at flicks, watch the dancers, check the Singers, dig the music, be full of poetry, understand old people, learn from the young, babies got something to say, even if they can’t say it old folks’way. The sun is a teacher clouds are question marks, the stars their periods. Ask the question nobody understands. Think up answers they will. Be for life. Against Killers, & People Sellers, and the fake good willers. Be Christ on day, Buddha the next, Krishna When you Blue, DuBois when you true Be Marley when you sing, Langston when You rap, Douglass when you speak Ho Chi Minh when they try to sneak. Be Fidel & Kick They Booty, Roumaine when You need Beauty, You can act like Zora Running the aesthetic of anthropological Colored Hip. You change to Margaret Walker To Valorize the people, Jimmy Baldwin To hyke the simply evil. You can be Cesaire & talk about the entire island Of the soul. You can speak immediate Wonderful Spanish, & then you’ll be Nicolas Guillen You is all the Africans you wanna Be You was Diop yesterday, Sembene This morning. I heard you in the bathroom You was Marvin Gaye ! Any one you love you can become Instantly, you was Malcolm in the evening Dr. King afternoon, just a little bit later You was talking like Robert Williams & your mouth became a gun Was you Robeson on the weekend I heard that Thunderous voice, I knew You was Nat Turner when I saw a serpent Burning. Somebody said you was Lorraine cause They saw a raisin risin’ & wondered was that You who brought them slaves up north on A greyhound, they saw yall getting off. You was talking like Miles a minute ago, Layin Bird’s crumpled vine across a chair, said to square, « So What ? » Waiting for Trane to come… I know you been Monk from day number one. You was Billie & Sassy & Ella & Johnny Hartman I heard you being Louis & Buhainia Dont blame ya putting down Lames paid talking about Art, But ain’t Blakey nor Farmer and it sure aint Tatum. You is them all the time. You the real President even with that counterfeit In your residence. No Splivs in The Caucasian Crib. But you is the only Rabbit, the only Ben Webster, and I aint saying You a predictable spook, but I knew all the time You’d show up as Duke. I ain’t crazy, I even expected Basie Anybody with the facts would know You’d come
1:57 AM
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