ME HEAR SEH DEM BAN DE AFRICAN.

Author’s Notes : It seems like a long time ago now. On the 13^th March I published “The African”  in part response to a couple of publication rejections based on the idea that many of the words in the rejected pieces were ‘ungrammatical’…I have been meaning to write another more ‘playful’ response for what seems like ages…This piece is imagined ( as explicitly indicated below) as a wave of three voices used in three different ways….

Talking Voice : Female - Jamaican Female Poet Style – In residual African Style

Singing Voice :  Male - Deep / Gravelly: Mid and High range

Toasting Voice :  I Roy style / U Roy style

Ridim: To be added by my musician brother

VERSE ONE: Me Hear Seh dem ban de African

Talk : Me hear seh dem ban de African.                   

Sing : Seh dem no warne no Rastaman.

Toast : And some men interpret nine memos – Say its an Enigma.

Toast : Bam biddley Bam Biddley and we don’t know where it goes.

Sing : Seh dem nuh warne we ina Babylon.

Talk : Me hear seh dem ban the African.

Toast : In days of old when Black was invented from Cairo to Kazghekistan.

Talk : Weh bout Mary Seacole and Nanny a de Maroons.

Sing  : Seh we warne we warne goa we yard.

                  

VERSE TWO: Oh lay a wallaby baby ball away

Sing : Away away over yonder calling still.

Talk : Free up yuh mine from babylon system.

Sing : Come away come away the daughter’s of Israel are singing.

Toast : Oh lay a wallaby baby ball away.

Toast : In fourteen hundred and ninety- two Christopher Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue.

Sing : Seh we wanrn we wanrn we wanrn go home.

Talk : Time fe we pass we culture class.

Toast : And mix a maxim wid bird rib.

Talk : Beating to de sound of boding bodiako de niah man.

VERSE THREE: Me Hear seh dem ban de European

Talk : Me hear tell seh dem ban de European.

Sing : Set me free ina me madda land.

Talk : But a time fe we pass we culture class.

Toast : And buy no more from the red Nevada Vendor. 

Toast : In twelve hundred BC Black Olmec carved heads on the pages of history.

Sing : Seh dem nuh warne no Rastaman.

Talk : Responding to the drum drum drumming.

Sing : Seh we warne we warne go home a we yard.

Toast : And won’t lovers now revolt and say now sir a war is won.

…Drifts into singing and laughter at end