Jayne Cortez and the Firespitters - There It Is

Nuff Said

Been listening to this all morning: poetry and jazz and invective - it's powerful stuff. Second track U.S. - Nigeria Relations is a mesmerising example of Cortez's performance poetry with the repeated line They want the oil but they don't want the people hammering home its stinging message. This method is used again for sixth track If The Drum Is A Woman: potent repetitions across a greater variety of lines, percussion accompanying. The marriage of jazz [the Firespitters] and poetry [Cortez] gets a rousing work-out on fifth track Opening Act.

I'm learning all the time: researching around this album I discover today that Jayne Cortez was married in 1954, at age 18, to Ornette Coleman. Nuff said.

And here are the lyrics to the rousing and more rockblues oriented opening track There It Is,

There It Is

My friend
they don't care
if you're an individualist
a leftist a rightist
a shithead or a snake

They will try to exploit you
absorb you confine you
disconnect you isolate you
or kill you

And you will disappear into your own rage
into your own insanity
into your own poverty
into a word a phrase a slogan a cartoon
and then ashes

The ruling class will tell you that
there is no ruling class
as they organize their liberal supporters into
white supremist lynch mobs
organize their children into
ku klux klan gangs
organize their police into killer cops
organize their propaganda into
a devise to ossify us with angel dust
pre-occupy us with western symbols in
african hair styles
inoculate us with hate
institutionalize us with ignorance
hypnotize us with a monotonous sound designed
to make us evade reality and stomp our lives away
And we are programmed to self destruct
to fragment
to get buried under covert intelligence operations of
unintelligent committees impulsed toward death
And there it is

The enemies polishing their penises between
oil wells at the pentagon
the bulldozers leaping into demolition dances
the old folks dying of starvation
the informers wearing out shoes looking for crumbs
the lifeblood of the earth almost dead in
the greedy mouth of imperialism
And my friend
they don't care
if you're an individualist
a leftist a rightist
a shithead or a snake

They will spray you with
a virus of legionnaire’s disease
fill your nostrils with
the swine flu of their arrogance
stuff your body into a tampon of
toxic shock syndrome
try to pump all the resources of the world
into their own veins
and fly off into the wild blue yonder to
pollute another planet

And if we don't fight
if we don't resist
if we don't organize and unify and
get the power to control our own lives
Then we will wear
the exaggerated look of captivity
the stylized look of submission
the bizarre look of suicide
the dehumanized look of fear
and the decomposed look of repression
forever and ever and ever
And there it is

Nuff said, you know

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