"Fattening Frogs For Snakes"
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|
for
Dennis Formento
& Arthur Pfister |
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|
|
Coming
out of Mississippi, |
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out of
the mouths |
|
of the
children |
|
&
grandchildren of slavery |
|
right
around the turn |
|
of the
20th century, |
|
|
|
calloused fingertips |
|
pressed down on the strings |
|
of
beat up guitars |
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on
small town street corners |
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or
broken down back woods joints |
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in the
darkness of Saturday night, |
|
|
|
or on
a bright Sunday morning |
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in a
ramshackle clapboard church, |
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making
music |
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to
praise the Lord, & give thanks |
|
for
another back breaking week |
|
in the
cotton fields of the Delta |
|
|
|
for
this was music created |
|
as
much to escape |
|
the
rigors of share cropping |
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&
brutal manual labor |
|
as to
shape a new form |
|
of
expression through song) |
|
|
|
& the
Delta blues sounded forth |
|
out of
Mississippi |
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on
crude recordings |
|
cut in
make shift studios |
|
by
enterprising white men |
|
from
the North, & sent out |
|
|
|
on 78
rpm singles |
|
from
Paramount & OKeh & Columbia |
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to
enter & reshape the lives |
|
of
people of every description |
|
all
over the world — the Delta sound |
|
ringing all up & down the line |
|
|
|
like a
National steel guitar |
|
frammed in some little jukehouse |
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in the
middle of the woods, |
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or the
amplified blast |
|
of an
electric guitar |
|
plugged into the wall |
|
|
|
in a
nasty street comer bar |
|
on the
South Side of Chicago, |
|
the
sound of Mississippi |
|
carried up from the Delta |
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into
the factories & tenements |
|
of the
cities of the North |
|
|
|
where
peoples could make a living |
|
outside the cotton fields |
|
& be
paid in cash dollars |
|
at the
end of every week or two |
|
&
conduct their lives |
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in the
ways that they saw fit |
|
|
|
& the
music sustained them |
|
as it
had in the South, trans- |
|
forming the industrial noise |
|
of the
urban landscape |
|
through amplified harmonicas |
|
&
pounding pianos |
|
|
|
& the
crashing of drums |
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& the
Fender bass — a music |
|
of
such great power |
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&
incredible beauty |
|
&
depth of emotion, so deeply rooted |
|
in the
lives of the people |
|
|
|
that
their bitter experience |
|
could
be shaped into art |
|
of the
highest possible order |
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that
would inform |
|
all of
popular music |
|
for
the rest of the century — |
|
|
|
but
their rewards |
|
would
never come, & the white man |
|
would
reap the fruits |
|
of
their artistic labors |
|
as if
they were bolls of cotton |
|
in a
9-foot croaker sack |
|
|
|
& the
music of the Delta |
|
would
be appropriated |
|
&
exploited beyond measure |
|
by the
descendents |
|
of the
slave holders, & their bank rollers |
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to
swell their bulging coffers |
|
|
|
&
nothing would be returned |
|
to the
people of the Delta |
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&
their music |
|
would
be taken away |
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& they
would be left |
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to
face the terrible future |
|
|
|
of
life in the ghetto |
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with
nothing to sustain them, |
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nothing to carry them |
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through the horrors of modem life, |
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nothing but the watered down sound |
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of
what was once their music |
|
|
|
played
back at them by white people |
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on
every television set in America, |
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nothing from the billions of dollars of profits |
|
to be
realized from their creations, |
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nothing to the creators, |
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nothing to the people who created them, |
|
|
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not
even the dignity |
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of
being recognized |
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for
the enormity of their contribution |
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to the
cultural life of our nation, |
|
nothing to the blues men, |
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nothing to the blues people — |
|
|
|
this
is what they mean |
|
when
they talk about the blues, |
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this
is what the blues is all about: |
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"fattening frogs for snakes" |
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&
watching the mother fucking snakes |
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slither off with the very thing you have made |
|
|
|
New
Orleans |
|
March
7/August 31/September 12-14, 1999 |
|
Ferndale, MI |
|
October 22-24,1999 |
|
New
Orleans |
|
November 13-16/December 18, 1999 |
