1. |
rootfeeder
03:11
|
|||
One needs the eyes of another to see what the shadow of the tree hides
the sick do not expect the medicine man to explain why they are being visited
the preparations for the ceremony will begin soon
we will make everything ready
and we will do this before the dead become angry at us
the rain is the erotic ritual between heaven and the earth
the leaves of the branches
the branches of the tree
all feed on the root
now leaves without branches
branches without roots
how do you stay alive?
it takes millions of tears to produce a flood capable of washing the dead to the realm of the ancestors
so if you refrain from weeping, you wrong the dead
rhythm and chant crack open that part of the self that holds grief under control
grief unleashed without the drums runs the risk of producing more death
it is a force without a container
and to the dead it is useless energy
like food wasted while people go hungry
an immense fire has been extinguished
and the living must reawaken it
we must all join in the groan.
|
||||
2. |
the groan
05:48
|
|||
(Romans 8:18-25
Luke 19:39, 40)
i've got a bone to pick in the decomposition of this cultures bed
i've got a stone to kick down a trail of tears through a thousand stories
and i've grown so quick, my roots sucking blood of the restless dead
i've got a groan so thick, i can't keep it contained inside one head
the spirits need your voices, lend your throats to the great blue wail
for the the moaning of the disappeared and all those trapped in jail
the silenced won't hold it in no more, it's a howling, mighty gale
it's a resurrected insurrection from inside the stolen shale
I've got a home down deep, we are of this earth and to her we're married
we've got to moan and weep, for the beauty's getting killed and our souls lie buried
so we've got to roam and creep all around this world til the truth is ferried
in our bones risen from sleep, for this old song is what we carry
All Creation is groaning for the children of God to be revealed
Our great mother forever birthing, our great mother forever heals
turn around all you who crucify, turn around you who rape and steal
and if you don't want to prophesy, well the rocks and the stones sure will
and they've got a tone so strong, they gonna rumble and quake until the lava comes out
and we've got to own what we have sown, if you plant the fire you gonna harvest the drought
Look what the drones are droppin down, they see everywhere but can't tell what love is about
but we're not alone against these wrongs, the land is asking us to amplify her shout!
can you hear her calling, Mama calling us home
can you hear her calling? We must join in the groan
|
||||
3. |
crossroads
05:34
|
|||
(Jeremiah 6:16)
I need Ellegua to crack open the code
Prophet Jeremiah standin at the crossroads
it's Mama Africa singin dirty blue notes
riddim, the voice of Jah pulsing up thru the bones
which way are you going now child?
we once were lost but now we're found
which way are you going now child?
back to the earth come on and follow me down
is your life in tune with Mama Nature?
that's what's gonna keep you on the level
or are you marching along with the dominator,
better check yoself, who's makin deals with the devil?
We have lost the good way
we have all gone astray
and we're gonna have to pay
unless we can all be saved
return to the ancient paths
live a holy life at last
if down that road you shall go
you'll find healin for your soul
down from the heavens and up through the floor
we are calling out to you to open up the door
O divine child with the old mans staff
teach us the trick, let us learn how to laugh
help us to hear from the red and the black
where is the path that can lead us back?
remove all the obstacles in the way
Maferefun Ellegua Ashe Ashe
Ago ile ago – Ago ile ago---Ago ile ago ya – Ago ile ago ya
(Yoruba Translation:)
Open up, open up
open the house
Open up, open up
Open up, the way, open up
|
||||
4. |
Since you were Laid Low
05:54
|
|||
Isaiah 14:3-23
Gen. 2:8,9
Gen. 18:1
Psalm 137
John 15:5
Matthew 3:10
Rev. 22:2
well, sit down here by the teaching oak, she gonna tell you an old, old story
bout the way things were before the fall of man when the forests lived in glory
when old earth man and the mother of life, sprawlin naked in the sun and had no shame
if you listen to the trees they'll show the way back to paradise and we can join in their refrain
Since you were laid low no one comes to cut us down
now grandmother willow's been weepin on her knees since the children got struck with the curse
and the myth of progress, sayin nature's just a resource, sure is makin it worse
now everybody's fightin over who gets the trees, fueling the empires of Gilgamesh and Solomon
but one day soon the oppressor shall cease and we'll take up this taunt against Babylon
Since you were Laid low no one comes to cut us down
Singing Oak and Cedar, Cypress and Pine
we are the branches and the Lord is the Vine
grass busting thru the concrete as a living sign
it's the tree of life's leaves that heal the nations at the end of time
since you were laid low no one comes to cut us down
All you rich, young rulers chewin on that forbidden fruit
well the Lord has got an axe and He's choppin at your root
if you cut down the forest that is what will come to you
so we all better learn to live Holy and New
while the trees singin..Since you were laid low no one comes to cut us down
|
||||
5. |
Soliwoulen
06:27
|
|||
( Matthew 25:40 )
There is trouble in the valley
There is trouble in the hills
There is trouble on the river
I gotta drive it out
I gotta drum and shout
There is trouble in the forest
There is trouble down below
There is trouble in my heart Lord
I gotta drive it out
I gotta drum and shout
Stretch me over this hallowed log
make me a trinity of goat and tree
Come on and beat it down so we all can rise up
walk like a panther and set the world free
It's the black snake moaning pipelines
drinking up the oil and the tar sands
through the roof comes global warming
fueled by the greed of the rich man
the screams of the last rainforest
echoing the call that we can't breathe
voices of the dead now join the chorus
in resistance against extraction companies
but we keep drillin and frackin and hackin and killin
the Earth is our mother, we actin like villians
are you ready to change? who out there is willin?
to fight for life, join in the rhythm
Soliwoulen comin out to give the tribe an inspection
and remind us all that something is wrong
the panther's claws shall remove the infection
repent, turn around, join the song
What you do to the least of these
you have done to me
What you do to the beasts and trees
you have done to me
What you do to the birds and bees
you have done to me
What you do to the lakes and seas
you have done to me
We better get down on our knees
and pray til we can see
that the Earth is alive and She's not for sale
She's not our private property
there is nothing left
we can hear the drums
there is nothing left
we can still hear the drums
Bring the pure wine of
love and freedom.
But don't u see? a tornado is swirling!
More wine, i tell you, we'll teach this storm
A thing or two about whirling.
There is a warrior inside you
a mighty mirror-masked dancer
let the Holy Spirit flow through
rise and walk like a panther.
Kodonbale, kodonbale eeeh, iye kodonbale,
kodonbale soli bara djara ye djara walero
Malinke Translation:
(The sun rises in the east. The place where the sun rises is called in Malinke: Kodon. The place where the sun rises is also always the place where the thunderstorms start.
But as often in African lyrics, the topic is rather metaphorical. They seem to talk about the Kodonba(le) coming and equal it with the threat of a panther (soli) and a lion (djara) appearing in the middle of the village, it means: "The panther has seen the lion"
"djara walerö" - the lion is in the bush.
A panther could be seen as weaker than a lion. The panther could stand for the people, the lion for the coming storm. They have seen the "lion" coming and know they have to hurry.
The Söliwoulen is a much-feared masker who is charged with protecting the bilakoro (the uninitiated young ones.) The word Söli is given to the ceremony proper, whilst Söliwoulen can be translated as "the red panther", referring to his strength and to the colour of his costume of panther skins that has also been studded with mirrors and amulets to add to his terrifying appearance. He dances alone and his arrival in the village spreads fear when he is seen to pass the entry.
|
||||
6. |
Ouroboros Mojo
07:48
|
|||
Genesis 3
Exodus 7:12
Numbers 21:4-9
John 3:14-15
Matthew 10:16
How many times can i shed my skin
if there's nothing inside left to be holy
outside the rhyme where i begin
your lies keep messin up the story
in that tree was the old poison
that monorhythm like a dread bulldozer
i'm gonna teach you bout the ways of sin
for the song of life is not yet over
Infinity keeps twisting me
swallow my tail and around we go
Death and rebirth, up from the earth
Ouroboros mojo
Python the oracle way down deep
smokin in the belly of the bedrock
sendin visions from below in a tranced up sleep
dreams of the future now unlocked
and when Tiamat first got shot
her body parts became the world
and when the rainbow snake did the boomerang shake
all of creation was unfurled
Now i know you think on me as evil
as a venomous tempting liar
but i'm that Kundalini energy
pushing your soul to go higher
and what did Moses do when the people were bitten in the quicksand?
he lifted me up for you, one glance and your healing was at hand
Now i've been wrapped around this stick
as long as i can remember
coils and rattles and a quick tongue flick
between earth and the spirit, I am the messenger
The serpent in the garden, the dragon of the dead
if i strike your heel, you gonna crush my head?
but when Jesus was wrapped around his tree
right then he made a reference to me
the secrets are no longer sealed
when you look on this you shall be healed
If medicine is what you want to get
then come and join Damballah's dance
and if you don't believe me yet
just look on the back of your ambulance
my snake oil can lube up your spine
you gotta spend that dime
and get yourself a bottle
joinin Earth and Sky when the serpents fly
the Aztec calendar sign
spiralling prayers to Quetzatlcoatl
I'm your DNA, i go all the way
back to the beginning of Creation
so don't get me wrong, i'm the pulse of the song
the symbol of transformation
|
||||
7. |
Walkin' Goat
06:12
|
|||
Gen 4:1-16
Exodus 3:1
Exodus 16:31, 32
Matthew 3:1-4
Mark 3:27
Isaiah 13:21, 22
1Samuel 17: 31-37
John 10:11
They put Pan's horns and hooves right there on Satan
to make it look like goats are bad
for those oppressors always hatin
all that wild energy they can't dam
from this slave system they'll be leavin
come sunday morning they'll be gone
in search of freedom, ever grievin
they walkin goat, gone cimarron.
and even Moses did his time
forty years out in the bush
trying to find that old fault line
and give their towers one last push
when you're eatin manna in the desert
re-wilding will not take long
a walking stick and camel hairshirt
they walkin goat, gone cimarron
and Abel's offering was better
than Cain's domesticating ways
trying to control down to the letter
instead of release each seven days
and now all that nomad blood is screaming
trying to bind up the man who thinks he's strong
and open up the songlines dreaming
it's walkin goat, gone cimarron
Animals will move into the ruins
you will be haunted by the howl
jackals will lie down in the palace
inside the tower nests the owl
and the illusions will fade away
Creation seeds another chance
ancient Spirits come out and play
and the wild goats go there to dance
and Corbett told us bout Quixote
and errantry that makes dreams real
a quest to destroy our apathy
the canyon lands teach us to feel
and don't forget now young King David
knocking down giants with a stone
seeking God's justice, yeah he craved it
he was walkin goat, gone cimarron
and Boujloud in old Morocco
King Midas has got the ears of an ass
cuz he's listening to the Pan pipes clock now
that deep free music from the past
Lady Anarchy is our new lover
She's got that Holy, Wild song
following her, we will discover
we walkin goat, gone cimarron
when the empire's got you by the throat
one way out is start walkin goat
well its time to sound that exodus note
and one way out is start walking goat
cuz even Jesus was a wanderer
preaching the deserts holy word
they all say he was a carpenter
but i call him the good shepherd
we step in time now with the thunder
that crack and boom and steam and gong
civilization's goin under
we walkin goat, gone cimarron
|
||||
8. |
Bellyroot of america
05:42
|
|||
by: james perkinson
(Mariwo Ye ye ye Mariwo Ogun Mariwo)
preacher preaches flung notes of sun
foot in the grave thump of dead rising
pelvic ground round world
gyrating limb of fruit
slice the plumb of night
bite the apple
peel the shadow
open the eyeball
climb inside the light and down
idea-root of raised hair
rib-walk of ancestor talk
talking my name
shouting cemeteries of summons
singing europe back to africa
singing america under water
singing me below the ground
spine is crossroads
cranium chamber of clatter
hand over hand they climb the leg
one hair-bristle at a time
like wetness rising
like cold beneath the feet
like a stammering gum of dread
grinning revelation
laughing blood tongues
dripping alarm bells
coming up the go down
coming on like the truth of brown
is this jesus?
are you the whale of jonah?
my head is a split nail
my left foot leads the world
i am ogou-glint of bullet thought
syllable of dent-in-the-head
sign of a broken rhyme
the hard red in your eye
dancing shivers into the space of existence
this is revolution in a bone
throat of running horse
elephant grunt of hunger
cock crow on the loose
growling reparation
thunder whiskey coal mouth swallowing swords
belching forges
orifice of time
bent angle of showdown
and i am the caught thief of hemisphere
answering to a continent
bloat is my crime
ocean my fine
becoming someone’s meal
the real sign of my destiny
do you shine before me, jesus,
like a jaw full of teeth?
|
||||
9. |
||||
oh, Lord don't let them move my mountain
but give me the strength to climb
and Lord don't let them take away these ancient rocks
but leave them in the ground
Oh Lord they are blowin up the top of my mountain
and creating a deadly holler fill
full of poisons runnin down into my drinkin well
it seems like they don't care what they kill
and they start by rippin all of the trees out
so the miners can get down to the seam
they have dredged the bones of the dead up from the underground
and they're killing the place where i dream
now, if there were no mountains
Lord, i might forget to pray
and if there were no forests, Lord,
i know we'd lose our way
for i know the higher the mountain
the sweeter the victory
oh Lord ever remind us
your spirit moves through streams, hills and trees
|
||||
10. |
Thanksgiving?
04:54
|
|||
written by: James Perkinson
I move my eye seeding the Holy, I move my eye
i see you
great lumbering limb
stretched like a wand of medicine
conjuring sky, the snow below
your arched hands a mirror
of the white horizon rising un-seamed
shroud of the season, full of ancestors
and dreams
the city slumbers, sullen, cement and silicon
silent before its fate, the frenzy of lights
a mere memory of night now, black-pocked with
bright, faded to this indistinct sheen of nullity
the great waiting, the stillness of a late coming
answer to the cries of bloodied abels and mothers
whose daughters herod slaughtered even yesterday
cauterized futures lurking in the height of the serrated
bark, blossoms whose spring lies buried
like a ring of volcanos and oil, shales of the north
tortured for their earth-rending secrets of seas
now forked into cars and wars, fleeing the
certain haze of extinction, the blaze of a burning
planet, tsunamis rolling shoreward like liquid
comets, the vomit of middle passages of the all
the unsung losses of orcas and seals, squid
and coral, the sorrel horse of john riding the winds
of ancient shamans like the drum-beat of mars
reaching the far edge of the living with star-messages
no longer discerned beneath the blanket of orange
locking huddled masses into a molasses of slow-jelling
lies, eyes blinded by light and unrhymed motion
no cycles of magic potions of dying kin birthing again,
inside the compacted engine of bechtel and gm, monsanto
and ibm, wall mart and wall street leaping straight into sheol
without even a grin of understanding, burning and burning
a million million barrels of oblivion in their bank accounts
the flanks of the mother heaving, the ranks of zombie-slaves
rising, carbon-belching, methane-breathing, ozone-cleaving
cyclone-stirring rage of a billion billion ungrieved living
holy ones rendered demon-forms in the pornography of
wild beauty made into gears and digits and bullets, cutting
loose the girth of life from the bone of rock that stocks our
brief epiphany with a halo of symphony and grace, frog-laughter
and meadow-lark dawn turned into the final verdict on our raging
refusal to see, blind to our own face rounded and cold
in the eye of salmon and kernel of corn, sold and dead
on the table, without a mouth left to feed
or sing
what if your holiday comes
and there is no seed or milk or leaf
left to thank?
|
||||
11. |
Clearcut
04:08
|
|||
Luke 13:6-9
A man had a fig tree
he went looking for fruit but he found none
so, cut it down
why should it be wasting the soil?
give it one more year
let me dig around it
spread manure on it
give it one more year
why should it be wasting the soil?
america’s a fig tree
we went looking for fruit but we found none
so, cut it down
why should it be wasting the soil?
give it one more year
let me dig around it
spread manure on it
give it one more year
why should it be wasting the soil?
Oh it’s all clear cut.
why should it be wasting the soil?
|
||||
12. |
Zoom
07:30
|
|||
Gen. 4:10
Ex 3:1-4
Ex. 7:16
Job 38
1Kings 17:1-7
2 kings 1:10
2 kings 2
Matthew 3:1-4
Heb. 11
Way, way long ago, you know, they flipped the script
(i tell you)
To know which way to go we gotta fix this trip,
(I ask you)
How do you read? Who's zoomin who?
Who is the King and Who is the Fool?
How do you read? Who's zoomin who?
Can you pull back the veil and try to reach through?
How do you read? Who's zoomin Who?
What is the Beast and what is the Zoo?
How do you read? who's zoomin who?
What does God say when She speaks through you?
Every sacred story requires interpretation
have you ever listened with the ears of creation?
the way it comes alive depends on what you do
for you are the ones that the dead try to speak through
Are you dispelling the fear or re-enforcing blasphemy?
Are you darkening the mirror or doing art on memory?
What is the tradition of the prophets stance?
How did Christs' Elders teach him how to dance?
It began with the disappeared, forgotten, cimarron renegades
but it has been twisted by lies of imperial crusades
so, let's go back to the beginning of the tale
and hear the story from those on the inside of the jail
Abel's ghost blood echoing from underground
in sonic percussion like a deep drum pound
whose reverb is the pulse of resistance to every temptation to forget
a rhythm of remembering that lies beneath every colonizers debt
the ones slain by Cain are the wound-able ones
Feeling the Land's Pain and always on the run
The tradition of an offspring who are "able" to be killed
but their offerings overturn the horror and the voice is speaking still
For the sin does not begin with one persons disobedience
Which version of the story are you feeding?
what the murderous ones passed down to their sons
starts with Abel's disappearance, not with Adams eating.
The break comes and the curse does fall
when we exile the wild to build the city wall
So, what is the meaning of Salvation?
it can only be the ending of our alienation
to stop this suffering alone
we must learn to build a home
through interspecies mediation!
There is a summons rising up from a deep old chant
to again be like Eve and see the faces in the plant
use the lens of the raven's eye to change the way you're readin'
Our lifestyle is what creates either Hell or Eden.
Spirit calling through all nature is the root of this tradition
a voice out of the bush demanding an end to all oppression
to come out to the wilderness and understand our condition
from the whirlwind telling Job to see that he is part of all creation
wind-riding-lightning calling-storm blessing divination
passing Elijah's mantle down to the Baptist's generation
this is how we must read
we must follow their lead
we learn how to live through this ancestral invocation.
zum zum zum capoeira mata um
hey zum zum zum
dance your clay
back to the old way
through the groaning dirt becoming replanted
close to the ground
remember the sound
that sings your soul back to its enchantment
leaf and branch
reaching for the chance
to send sunlight back down to the rootbed
mulch and rot
the wet and the hot
composting the poison inside your head
|
Streaming and Download help
If you like BEAST, you may also like:
Bandcamp Daily your guide to the world of Bandcamp