Revolutionaries In Leo: Grandfather's Day

True Blues

Ain't no new news

about who's been abused

For the Blues is as old

As my stolen soul

I sang the Blues when the missionaries came

Passing out Bibles in Jesus' name

I sang the Blues in the hull of the ship

Beneath the sting of the slavemaster's whip

I sang the Blues when the ship anchored at dock

My family being sold on a slave block

I sang the Blues being torn from my first born

And hung my head and cried

When my wife took his life

And then committed suicide

I sang the Blues on the slavemaster's plantation

Helping him build his free nation

I sang the Blues in the cotton field

Hustlin' to make the daily yield

I sang the Blues when he forced my woman to bed

Lord knows I wish he was dead

I sang the Blues on the run

Ducking the dogs and dodging the gun

I sang the Blues hangin' from a tree

In a desperate attempt to break free

I sang the Blues from sun up to down

Cursing the master when he wasn't around

I sang the Blues in all his wars

Dying for some unknown cause

I sang the Blues in a high tone, low moan

Loud groan, soft grunt, hard funk

I sang the Blues on land, sea and air

About who, when, why and where

I sang the Blues in church on Sunday

Slavin' on Monday

Misused on Tuesday

Abused on Wednesday

Accused on Thursday

Fried alive on Friday

And died on Saturday

Sho'nuff singin' the Blues

I sang the Blues in the summer, fall, winter and spring

I know sho'nuff the Blues is my thing

I sang the Backwater Blues

Rhythm and Blues

Gospel Blues

St. Louis Blues

Crosstown Blues

Chicago Blues

Mississippi Goddamn! Blues

The Watts Blues

Harlem Blues

Hough Blues

Gutbucket Blues

Funky junkie Blues

I sang the up north cigarette cough Blues

The down south strung out the side of my mouth Blues

I sang the Blues black

I sang the Blues blacker

I sang the Blues blackest

I sang about my sho'nuff 
Blue Blackness

Jalaluddin Mansur Nuriddin

Be Yond Er

1969-1977

01 Bird's Word (Last Poets)

02 True Blues (Last Poets)

03 E Pluribus Unum (Last Poets)

04 Mean Machine chant (Last Poets)

05 Mean Machine (Last Poets)

06 On the Subway (Last Poets)

07 Sport (Lightnin' Rod)

08 Doriella Du Fontaine (Lightnin' Rod/Buddy Miles/Jimi Hendrix)

09 Reflections (Last Poets)

10 White Man's Got a God Complex (Last Poets)

11 Surprises (Last Poets)

12 Opposites (Last Poets)

13 Tranquility (Last Poets)

14 Brother Hominy Grit (Lightnin' Rod)

15 The Bones Fly from Spoon's Hand (Lightnin' Rod)

16 Jones Comin' Down (Last Poets)

17 O.D. (Lightnin' Rod/Buddy Miles/Jimi Hendrix)

18 Hamhock's Hall Was Big (Lightnin' Rod)

19 Wake Up, Niggers (Last Poets)

20 Death Row (Last Poets)

21 Jazzoetry (Last Poets)

22 Beyonder (Last Poets)

Total time: 1:30:43
disc break can go after Track 13

compilation by EN of Jalal's early 1970s output as Lightnin' Rod and with The Last Poets

518 MB FLAC/July 2018 archive link

So yes, it's Jalal's birthday. He passed away on June 4th, but today would have been his 74th so I am putting up this mixtape I made the week after he split.

He is considered, with his Last Poets compatriots and Gil Scott-Heron, one of the formative Grandfathers of Rap.

His Lightnin' Rod persona collaborated with Hendrix and created some of the most vivid portraits of the Hustler's life ever waxed. Then he joined The Last Poets and led them in fusillades of pure militancy, switching gears into a whole bunch of the greatest screeds ever penned about the oppression of one human group by another.

All of his stuff is ripped from yesterday's, today's and tomorrow's headlines, and he will be missed. But he did his job, over a lifetime, and his was as good as a life can be when it's lived in service to a cause greater than the selves we are tricked into worshiping as phony deities of Ego.

I never agreed with everything he had to say, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that we all rediscover what it means to think for ourselves, beyond the false choices and suicidal constructs the power piglets allow us to pitifully perceive in perspectiveless penury for their eternal profit and dominance.

Jalal walked that path for all his years, and he'd want us all to continue his life's project... in the context of space and time, and maybe even rhyme.--J.

7.24.1944 - 6.4.2018