History

Yet, in a casual gesture, if it's talk you want, we can say Cesaire, Damas, Depestre, Romaine, Guillen You want us to say Dumas, Pushkin, Browning, Beethoven You want Shaka, Askia, (& Roland Snellings too) Mandingo, Nzinga, you want us to drop Cleopatra on you or Hannibal what are you masochists paper iron chemistry & smelting I aint even mentioned Toussaint or Dessaline or Robeson or Ngugi Hah you bloody & dazed, screaming at me to stop yet, No, hah, you think its over, tradition song, tradition poem, poem for us together, poem for arthur blythe who told us again, in the tradition in the tradition of life & dying in the tradition of those klanned & chained & lynched and shockleyed and naacped and ralph bunched hah, you rise a little I mention we all saw the tradition of amos and andy hypnotized selling us out vernons and hooks and other nigger crooks of gibsons and crouchs and other assorted louses of niggers that turn from gold to shit proving dialectics muhammad ali style But just as you rise up to vote I scream COLTRANE! STEVEIE WONDER! MALCOLM X! ALBERT AYLER THE BLACK ARTS! Shit & whistling out of my nkrumah, cabral, fanon, sweep – I cry Fletcher Henderson, Cane, What Did I Do To Be So Black & Blue, the most perfect couple in the language I scream Moon Indigo, Black Bolshevik, KoKo, Now's The Time, Ark of Bones, Lonely Woman, Ghosts, A Love Supreme, Walkin, Straight No Chaser, In The Tradition of life & dying centuries of beautiful women crying In the tradition of screamed ape music coon hollers shouts even more profound than its gorgeous sound In the tradition of all of us, in an unending everywhere at the same time line and motion forever like the hip Chicago poet Amus Mor like the Art Ensemble like Miles’ Venus DeMilo & Horace Silver reminding us & Art Blakey sending us messages Black Brown & Beige people & Pharaoh old and Pharaoh new, Blood Brotherhoods all over the planet, land songs land poems land sculptures and paintings, land niggers niggers want still want will get, land in the tradition of all of us in the positive aspect all of our positive selves, cut zora neale & me & a buncha other folks in half. My brothers and sisters in the tradition. Vincent Smith & John Biggers, Color mad dudes, Elizabeth Catlett, Charles White, William White, Bob Thompson & the 60’s muralists. Jake Lawrence & Aaron Douglass & Ademola, Babatunde building More Stately Mansions We are the composers, racists & gunbearers We are the artists Don't tell me shit about a tradition of deadness & capitulation of slave masters sipping tea in the parlor while we bleed to death in the fields tradition of cc rider see what you done done dont tell me shit about a tradition of slave masters & henry james I know about it up to my asshole dont tell me shit about bach mozart or even ½nigger Beethoven get out of Europe come out of europe if you can cancel on the english dpts this is America north, this is America where's yr American music george washington won the war where's yr american culture southernagrarians academic Aryans penwarrens & wilburs say something american if you dare if you can where's your american music Nigger music? (Like englishmen talking about great britain stop with tongues lapped on their cravats you put the irish on em. Say shit man, you mean irish irish literature . . .when they say about that you say nay you mean irish irish literature you mean for the last century you mean, when you scream you say nay, you mean yeats, synge, shaw, wilde, joyce, ocasey, beckett, them is, nay, them is irish, irish as the ira You mean nigger music ? dont hide in europe – “oh that's classical!” No come to this country nigger music? that's all you got mumble Gershwin? mumble Copeland? Even you got better sense than to say Leonard Bernstein you don't know Ives Nigger Music you better go up in appalachia and get some mountain some coal mining songs, you better go down south in our land & talk to the angloamerican national minority they can fetch up a song or two, country 7 western could save from looking like saps before the world otherwise Palante! Latino, Native American Bomba, Plena, Salsa, Rain dance War dance Mgical invective The Latin Tinge Cherokee, Sonny Rollins w/ Clifford Brown. Diz & Machito, and Mongo SantaMaria Coming Coming Coming the World Saxophone Quartet you cannot stand up against, Hell No, I Aint Goin To No Afghanistan, Leon Thomas, million year old pygmies you cannot stand up against, nor Black Arthur telling you like Blue Turhan Bey, Odessa, Romance can Bloom even here in White Racist Land It can Bloom as Beautiful, though flawed by our oppression it can bloom, bloom in the tradition of revolution Renaissance Negritude Blackness Negrissmo Indigisme sounding niggers swahili speaking niggers niggers in turbans rna & app & aprp &cap black blacks & assembly line, turpentine, mighty fine female blacks and cooks, truck drivers, coal miners small farmers, iron, steel and hospital workers in the tradition of us the reality not us the narrow fantasy in the tradition of african american black people / America nigger music's almost all you got, and you find it much too hot in the tradition thank you arthur for playing & saying reminding us how deep how old how black how sweet we is and bees when we remember when we are our memory as the projection of what it is evolving in struggle in passion and pain we become our sweet black selves once again, in the tradition in the African american tradition open us yet bind us let all that is positive find us we go into the future carrying a world of blackness yet we have been in the world and we have gained all of what there is and was, since the highest expression of the world, is its total & the universal is the entire collection of particulars ours is one particular one tradition of love and suffering truth over lies and now we find ourselves in chains the tradition says plainly to us fight, plainly to us fight, thats in it, clearly, we are not meant to be slaves it is a detour we have gone through and about to come out the tradition of gorgeous africa blackness says to us fight, it's all right, you beautiful as night, the tradition thank you Langston/thank you arthur says sing says fight the tradition, always clarifying, always new and centuries old says Sing! Fight! Sing! Fight! Sing! Fight! Sing! Fight! Dee-doo dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee! DEATH TO THE KLAN! Thank you.