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Sea Green Singers - Breaths
- Original hand written score - To
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Bam bam dee dah dah, Chorus: Listen more often to things than to beings Ancestors breath when the fire’s voice is heard Listen more often to things than to beings Ancestors breath in the voice of th war. Verse1: Those who have died never never left, The dead are not under the earth They are in the rustling trees, They are in the growing woods They are in the crying grass They are in the moaning rocks The dead are not under the earth, So.. Structure: Intro, chorus, verse 1, chorus, verse 2 Improvised chorus based on echoed/overlaid phrases and rhymns |
2: Those who have died have never never left, The dead have a pact with the living They are in the woman’s breast, They are in the wailing child They are with us in the house, They are with us in the crowd The dead have a pact with the living, so… |
In the African world view, the invisible world of spirit, man and the visible
world of nature exist along a continuum and form an organic reality. The same
is true of the relationship between past, present and future. In Birago Dlop’s
poem Breaths we are reminded of this continuum
African Francophone poet and storyteller Birago Diop was born outside Dakar,
Senegal, in 1906. Encouraged by his family from a young age to pursue his
literary and scholarly aspirations, he earned a BA from Lycée Faidherbe
in Saint-Louis, Senegal, before eventually moving to France to pursue veterinary
medicine at the University of Toulouse. In Paris, Diop encountered many other
African, black American, and Caribbean expatriates and fell into the emerging
negritude literary and artistic movement.
In 1933, Diop returned to Senegal, where his career as a veterinarian led
him throughout rural West Africa. On these excursions, he encountered indigenous
Wolof traditions and oral literature, which greatly informed his later work.
African subject matter treated in classically French forms characterizes his
unique style. A recipient of the Grand Prix Littéraire de l’Afrique-Occidentale
Francaise and an Officier de la Légion d’Honneur, Diop died in
Dakar in 1989.