SOUNDTRACK: ADIA VICTORIA-“South Gotta Change” (2020).
Adia Victoria is a singer songwriter who describes her music as “Gothic blues” and that’s pretty apt. She has two albums out.
On her first album Beyond the Bloodhounds, she has a song entitled “Stuck in the South” (she is based in Nashville). This song featured a wonderful couplet:
“I don’t know nothing ’bout Southern belles / but I can tell you something ’bout Southern hell.”
Her voice is raspy and powerful and she’s not opposed to letting that raspiness really shine through–especially when her songs rock out (which some do).
“South Gotta Change” is her latest single (not attached to a third album yet) and it is a moody piece of perfection which she describes as a
promise to engage in the kind of ‘good trouble’ John Lewis understood necessary to form a more perfect union.
The song opens with a six-note echoing reverbed guitar and Victoria’s clean vocals
You’ve been running from the ghost
You keep it hidden in your past
The veil before your face is falling, and it’s falling fast
When she gets to the direct chorus
“The South gotta change”
a guitar solo rips through the quiet and then a chorus of voices sing “Change!”
She sings the same verse several times throughout the song with each version changing somewhat. By the end when she sings
‘Cause I love you, I won’t leave you
Won’t let you slip away
Come what may
We’re gonna find a way
Her voice is imploring and demanding.
[READ: April 3, 2021] “Let America Be America Again”
Rae Khalil read part of this poem during her Tiny Desk (home) Concert. I had never heard of this poem before and I was sure that she had written it because it seemed so pertinent. The title alone seemed like a n excellent response to what we’ve just been through.
Then she said it was by Langston Hughes and I had to look it up. And I saw that it was 86 years old. And it is staggeringly apt.
Whether or not you can say you have the same experience as the narrator (America never was America to me)–and I can’t say that I can–it is certainly easy to empathize with him. As more and more injustice comes to light and as public figures are more upfront about their racist hearts than they have been in eighty-some years, this poem needs to be more prominent.
“Let America Be America Again”
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!
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SOUNDTRACK: Right-wing lies about the Insurrection (2021).
SOUNDTRACK: SUDAN ARCHIVES-Tiny Desk Concert #979 (June 22, 2020).
Sudan Archives at Johnny Brenda’s was a show I had really wanted to see. When I realized she was playing there the show was already sold out. Then Coronavirus came in and shows were starting to get cancelled.