No ‘message songs’, please
(Lest you lose the ‘cross-over appeal’)
They kicked The Minstrels out of the studio/market
Because all they had were “message songs”;
Message sad sweet and so relentlessly soulful
But which told the kind of Truth
The masters were loath to hear
Too black in sound and sense
And far too blunt for those coached to sing
And dance and leave their brains at home
No damned slave songs, no sorrow strains
No Strange Fruit blues
No finger-pointing ooohs and aaahs
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Just happy Negro beats, black and gratefully simple
Tired of Memory’s millstone
Our necks shrink beneath our heads
There are just so many deeds of our glorious past
That all good people must just forget
Forgive, then forget
The Good Book is sound and strict on that
The enslaved and the enslaver alike
Must practice the good old art of Dis-remembrance
No ‘message song’, please
No blame game and its politics of penance
We want you to sing, not to sigh
Your cross over fate resides in absolute complance