Sky high gele, bold and beautiful!

Finally...a moment. This weekend was super busy. My sister got married, and it was just so beautiful. Lots of prayers, dancing, singing, EATING! I almost overdosed on Jollof rice and chicken this weekend! This was the first marriage in my family, so it was all brand new to all of us. Everything went well though...well other than the part were I sat on something and stained my dress just before we walked into the church. I'm walking down the isle thinking "please don't notice, pleaaase don't notice!" And no one did, or they were just lying...who knows. We changed into traditional for the reception, pink ankara dresses with gele . Lets talk about me in my "sky high gele!" What was gele created for, if not to punish women!?? For the engagement ceremony, two nights before the church wedding, I attempted to tie my gele by myself. Many offered to help me, but I, in my stubbornness decided that it was a mountain that I had to climb on my own. Well, I eventually managed to tie it, but not without suffering temporary hearing loss, and severe headaches!! Good times though.

I went into the studio yesterday to record "Mama", the second piece for my grant application. This piece actually got me kinda choked up during recording. This has never happened before. But something about it sounded so organic that I didn't re-record. So let me tell you how I love Oozeela! I am sooo happy that I've chosen him as my producer for this album. He listened to the piece, and literally stole a melody out of my heart and played it on his keyboard! Like that wasn't enough, he decided to add in some of his vocals as well! I'm just so excited to start working on this album! Grant or no grant, I'm doing this thing.

Feature Poet - Gil Scott Heron ...and more

So I've finally finished the grant application! I'll be submitting 2 sample pieces one of which is "I am" and the other will be "Mama". I need to to go into the studio this week to record "Mama" and then I'll be sending off the application and praying and hoping for the best. I heard back from the Edmonton Poetry Festival, they'll be putting up a schedule shortly and then I'll know when and where I'll be performing! yay! I've got so much on the fly with my sister's wedding coming up this weekend. I haven't had a chance to read or write much lately, but hopefully when the dust settles I'll be able to get back into the swing of things.



So the feature poet for this week is Gil Scott Heron, who has been described as the mouthpiece for the black person in America in the 70s and 80s. He is an amazing poet, who was never afraid to stand up and be heard! This is definitely one of his more popular pieces and definitely one of my favorites.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

Having my cake and eating it too!

Happy birthday to me! So it's been another year full of life and growth and love...I am so thankful! I also realized that I missed the 1 year anniversary of my blog which was actually on August 2nd, so happy anniversary blog!

I continue to learn that you can always start over. Fall and stand up, fall and stand up, again and again and again and again!!

Here's to another year of living, loving and learning

Love, love, love!

Feature Poet: Saul Williams

So I fully intended on doing this feature poet thing on the same day every week, but I was too busy Cariwesting this weekend! Don't get me started on how my heels were aching so bad last night that I couldn't sleep. But yes, the feature poet this week is none other than Saul Williams. In my opinion, one of the great poets of our time. I cannot say enough about this man! He has been such an inspiration to me. This particular poem is one of my favorites, I get chills each and every time I hear it.

Jump and wave!

This weekend is the Cariwest festival! It's an annual weekend of food, dancing and all round festival fun...aka an excuse to dress scantily and act wild. This is my 8th year in the parade, playing with the Trincan Steel Orchestra. The parade starts at 12:30 pm and goes for hours and hours in the BLAZING sun! Not always the best when you're standing behind reflective steel pans in 31 degree heat! Lord help me. I love it though, next to poetry...it is music...music. I've felt such an emotional connection to a melody, that I'm almost brought to tears..perhaps I should've kept that to myself.

So if you're in the downtown Edmonton area this weekend, come to Cariwest, and bring your dancing shoes! Also a friend of mine is involved in putting on the Afrikadey Festival this year, so if you're in Calgary, go check that out!

I'm still writing and trying to get the poetry thing going...no I have not forgotten that the deadline is creeping up.

Go out and enjoy the sun this weekend!
Love, love, love!

On and on...

So...nothing new lately. Had another grant meeting on saturday and finally finished the write-up for the grant! Just a bit of editing and formatting left to be done and it should be good and ready for the September 1st deadline. Still waiting to hear back about the poetry festival, the sign-up deadline for that is August 15th (my birthday!), so likely sometime after that I'll know if i'm in or *gasp* out. In the meantime I'm writing like crazy, trying to pull inspiration from everywhere.

I went with my parents to a car dealership last friday. (My mom is shopping around for a new whip). Now my parents are very well educated people, speak perfect English in fact, but often times people are too focused on the fact that they're a) black and b) have a Nigerian accent to be bothered to listen properly when they speak. It is extremely frustrating to me when my mom turns to me for help when the very English I speak, I learnt from her. She speaks 3 languages!! My parents gave up so much for us to be in this country, so that we could actually have a fighting chance in this crazy world. Anyways..that's a whole other blog entry. So i'm watching my parents talking to the dude at the car dealership, and I'm hit (almost literally hit in the face) by a poem I just had to write. Just got my iphone this week, and it has a neat little "notes" application on it. So right then and there I started writing...I have this new piece about my parents that I'll be posting just as soon as I'm satisfied that it's "finished". It will likely be on my upcoming album (you like how I slipped that in there ;))

So yeah...nothing new, but lots in the making. My sister's getting married in a couple of weeks!! eeee! oh and it's my birthday soon :)

love love love!

Feature Poet: Lauryn Hill

Alright, so I've decided to have a post with a feature poet every week. It'll be a chance to showcase people and lyrics that inspire me. I'll start this off with one of my favorite singer/rapper/poet/wonder woman lol. Even though she has checked out a little bit as of late. Lauryn Hill is a master lyricist!! She'll probably be featured a lot here cause almost everything she spits is FIRE!




Mystery of Iniquity

Ya'll can't handle the truth in a courtroom of lies
Perjures the jurors
Witness despised
Crooked lawyers
False Indictments publicized
Its entertainment...the arraignments
The subpoenas
High profile gladiators in bloodthirsty arenas
Enter the Dragon
Black-robe crooked-balance
Souls bought and sold and paroled for thirty talents
Court reporter catch the surface on the paper
File it in the system not acknowledged by the Maker
Swearing by the bible blatantly blasphemous
Publicly perpetrating that "In God We Trust"
Cross-examined by a master manipulator
The faster intimidator
Receiving the judge's favor
Deceiving sabers doing injury to they neighbors
For status, gratis, apparatus and legal waivers
See the bailiff
Representing security
Holding the word of God soliciting perjury
The prosecution
Political prostitution
The more money you pay.. the further away solution
Legal actors
Babylon's benefactors
Masquerading as the agency for the clients
Hypocritical giants
Morally non-compliant
Orally armed to do bodily harm
Polluted, recruited and suited judicial charm
And the defense isn't making any sense
Faking the confidence of escaping the consequence
That a defendant is depending on the system
Totally void of judgment purposely made to twist em'
Emotional victim blackmailed by the henchmen
Framed by intentions
Inventions whereby they lynch men
Enter the false witness slandering the accused
Planting the seed openly showing he's being used
To discredit, edit, headed for the alleged
Smearing the individual fearing the unsuspected
Expert witness (the paid authority)
Made a priority to deceive the majority
Of disinterested peers
Dodging duty for years
Hating the process
waiting to be returning to their careers
Do we expect the system made for the elect
To possibly judge correct?
Properly serve and protect?
Materially corrupt
Spiritually amuck
Oblivious to the cause
Prosperously bankrupt
Blind leading the blind
Guilty never defined
Filthy as swine
A generation purin it's own mind
Legal extortion
Blown out of proportion
In vein deceit
The truth is obsolete
Only two positions:
Victimizer or Victim
Both end up in destruction trusting this crooked system
Mafia with diplomas keeping us in a coma trying to own a piece
of the "American Corona"
The Revolving Door
Insanity every floor
Skyscraping, paper chasing
What are we working for?
Empty traditions
Reaching social positions
Teaching ambition to support the family superstition?
When the Son of Podition is Commander in Chief
The standard is Thief
Brethren can we candidly speak?
Woe to the men
Trusted in the chariots dem'
Leaning on horses
They run their intellectual sources
Counterfeit wisdom creating the illusion of freedom
Confusion consumes them
Every word they speak it turns them out really white
Internally they absent of light
trapped in the night and bonded to the Cain of the night
Under the curse
Evil men waxing more worse
Faxing the first
Angelic being cast to the earth
It's time for rebirth
Burnin up the branch and the root
The empty pursuits of every tree bearing the wrong fruit
Turning me ill
Let him who stole, no longer steal
Oh it's real
Surrender for Jehovah is real
How long will you sleep
Troubled by the thoughts that YOU keep
The idols YOU heap
Causing the destruction you reap
Judgment has come
Find it and return to the One
Abandon the flesh
Self-interest: Broadway to death
Pride and the Greed
Hide and subdividing the seed
The knowledge of Good and Evil is what caused us to lie
Caused us to die
Let your emotions be crucified
Renounce all your thoughts
Repent and let your mind be re-taught
You'll find what you sought...was based on the deception you bought
A perception of naught
Where the majority remains caught

Loving a lie
Not realizing in Adam, all die

Loving a lie
Not realizing in Adam, all die

Loving a lie
Not realizing in Adam, all die

Loving a lie
Not realizing in Adam, all die


It's the mystery of Inequity
Say it's the history of Inequity
Say it's the misery of Inequity
When it all...
All falls down
I'm telling you all...
It all falls down

Another day at the office...

I want you to know
That I hear it
Behind the calculated smiles
When you decide at first sight
What this face is worth
And I see it
When you glance from
Long extensive resume to
Brown face in disbelief
Because my achievements don’t fit neatly
Into the little box you prepared to put me in

I feel it inside that stunned silence
In boardroom conversation
When the unexpected woman voice
Springs forth from black mouth
Speaks clear and coherent
But even though my lips are moving
You can’t seem to hear me
I have pieced together thought and logic
But you can’t bring yourself to understand it
Because I’ve denied you
The usual defenses
You will not use my so called “africanness”
To dangle success from my reach

But beneath freshly pressed pencil skirts
And crisp white collars
I carry her in my spirit even now.
That girl,
Before the
Stand up straights,
Don’t talk with your mouth full,
And color within the lines.
I am still that barefoot brown girl
Running wild on dusty roads
Carrying the dreams of an entire race