I like all kinds of music but I have a particular penchant for music with passion, social content and meaning!! Joe does it for me!!
Another couple of minutes of Joe Solo giving it his all.
In Search of Captain Beefheart – The Promo Video
Acoustic Guitarists of the Sixties – Bert Jansch, Davy Graham, John Renbourn and Roy Harper.
The mid-sixties produced a wealth of great acoustic music loosely under the initial heading of Folk-Blues but in reality extending much further than that. The Greenwich Village Scene, sparked off by Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Phil Ochs, had sparked a massive resurgence in folk music and made it a commercial proposition. So much so that the record companies were chasing acoustic performers and the Pop Charts featured them. The popular performers, like Donovan, were propelled into Pop stardom. But there was an underlying scene that did not see itself as part of the Pop scene at all. They were producing music for a new generation of aficionados.
Davy Graham was probably the most seminal to the movement. His brand of Folk-Blues was adulterated, if that is the right word, with jazz and middle Eastern rhythms and chords. He started the ball rolling with his brilliant Angie (Anji) which set a new innovative standard in guitar playing. Teaming up with the Folk Traditionalist Shirley Collins he took Contemporary Folk in a different direction.
Bert Jansch came roaring down from Scotland with venom and spark to illuminate the Folk Scene with his verve and mastery of the guitar coupled with strident singing.
John was more mellow and melodic and based a lot of his music on more traditional material. He was the ideal foil for Bert and together they produced some excellent music before expanding and teaming up with Danny Thompson and Jacqui McShee to form Pentangle.
Roy burst on the scene a little later, befriended Davy, Bert and John, and developed his own acoustic style that tended to be more aggressive, at least in those early days. For a time Roy had a number of musical directions to follow – his love songs, social protests, humour and instrumentals. It was a toss up as to which he was going to progress.
I was fortunate to see all of them perform on a number of occasions back in the days of Les Cousins, The Barge and Bunjies and I enjoyed them all. I also used to frequent the Three Horse Shoes where, in the basement, Pentangle performed for free – more a meeting of friends.
My feeling was that the fires that stoked Davy, Bert and John cooled pretty quickly as their proficiency developed. Their music was sophisticated and high quality but I preferred the energy, vibe and stridency of the Harper songs – like One For All, or Blackpool. They had an urgency about them. Though Roy was not as technically proficient as Bert, Davy or John, he more than made up for that with his drive and innovation. But then, as with everything, it is always a matter of taste, isn’t it? And musical proficiency does not always produce the best music, does it? Sometimes a bit of raucous energy injects a spark that is lacking in more sophisticated exponents and propels the music into a different dimension.
Oh for the wonders of those days. I’d give anything to see those four perform again. It is so strange to think that Roy is the only one of those four who is still alive.
Bob Dylan Liverpool May 8th 2017 Concert – review and photos
What can you say about Dylan that hasn’t been said? He’s a law unto himself. He does what he likes. He does not seem to care about what anyone thinks. He ploughs his own groove.
In terms of the many Dylan concerts I have attended over the years I rate this one as middling – an interesting night. I enjoyed it. It was a strange eclectic mix of styles. It was different to anything I’d seen before – but that is not unusual – nearly every Dylan concert is different to anything I’ve seen before. But this one was not up there with the best but neither was it down there with the worst.
You never know what to expect from a Dylan concert these days. We mainly go along to pay homage to someone who has been a master songwriter, major influence on Rock and songwriting, a great performer and someone responsible for putting poetry and social conscience into Rock Music. He is a genius. We pay our respects.
Was Bob a bit shaky? No not in the least. I thought that he looked good – at least from the distance we were away – and his voice sounded fine.
So we paid our money and took our seats. This gives you some idea of where we were. We were so far away that it took us three numbers to work out which one was Bob Dylan. He fooled us by mainly sitting behind the keyboards and occasionally straying out into the middle to grab a mic stand which he proceeded to hold at an angle and croon.
At no time did he pick up a guitar or go near a harmonica.
The band were excellent, Bob was in good voice and the sound system was brilliant. There were no screens or stage effects or paraphernalia – just Bob and his band.
We were instructed not to take photos. What is that about? Is that Dylan? Can he have become that greedy that he doesn’t want people having a free memento?
At no time did Bob talk to the audience. They went from number to number without any intro.
Bob looked almost the cowboy with his white hat and white and black suit. You couldn’t help thinking that this was Bob doing Showbiz.
That was reinforced by the eclectic mix of material. I never, ever thought that I’d hear Bob crooning ballads like Autumn Leaves, That Old Black Magic and the like, but that is what he did. You had to relax into it. It was Showbiz. It actually sounded OK – in fact a lot better than I could ever have imagined. Bob’s voice sounded alright. Besides I had got used to it from hearing the last two albums of standards. This wasn’t Dylan, the snarling scourge of society; this was Dylan the Showbiz performer – the song and dance man.
In between the standards he sprinkled some of his own stuff. There were brilliant versions of Love Sick, Desolation Row, Ballad of a Thin Man and a rather strange Blowing in the Wind. This was music. It wasn’t geared to making you think or driving you to the barricades; it was simply good music. He wasn’t commentating, taking a stance or making any points. He was singing. There was a range of styles from Swing, Country to Rock and the band was up for it all.
I enjoyed the evening, despite it not being value for money, and came out thinking that it was another strange event in the Dylan lexicon of oddities. I had previously endured the Gospel period and other gigs where he did not seem to care at all but I had also seen him when he soared. All things will pass. Dylan will move on and do his own thing – be his own man, not beholden to anybody. But I still yearned for that socially aware Dylan of yore who spat out his poetry with barbed fury, the Dylan who used his guitar, harmonica and voice as weapons, who set us alight. That was the man who had woken me up to thinking about war, social injustice, freedom and hypocrisy.
In front of me was a young couple who talked through the whole gig. At the end she turned to her partner and said ‘well at least I can say that I’ve seen Bob Dylan now’. That is what it has become.
I saw him but he was missing.
This was brought home to us all on the way out (past the sold out merchandise stalls). There was a guy outside busking with a guitar and harmonica, singing those early songs with gusto, venom and feeling. He sounded like the Dylan of old. He meant it. He wasn’t doing music. He was doing something more. A huge crowd had gathered around him cheering him on and getting into those old songs. They were still new, vital and meaningful – just as relevant today as they ever were. Those songs were the rallying call of a generation. They were the ones we all craved for.
Maybe one day Dylan will want to be a leader again, to make a stand against the madness consuming us? Or maybe he’s content to keep his head down and cream off all he can take?
Which is the best Buffy St Marie track? Carry it on? My Country Tis of They People you’re Dying? or Universal Soldier?
Well which is the best Buffy St Marie song? This is a Native American woman who has written some exceptional songs over the years. I narrowed it down to three contenders:
Carry It On
My Country Tis of Thy People You’re Dying
Universal Soldier.
There were a number of other choices. But for me these 3 stood out.
Carry it on!
Carry It On by Buffy Sainte-Marie
Hold your head up Lift the top of your mind
Put your eyes on the Earth
Lift your heart to your own home planet
What do you see?
What is your attitude
Are you here to improve or damn it
Look right now and you will see we’re only here by the skin of our teeth as it is
So take heart and take care of your link with Life and
Oh carry it on –
We’re saying Oh carry it on –
Keep playing
Oh carry it on –
And praying
It ain’t money that makes the world go round
That’s only temporary confusion
It ain’t governments that make the people strong
It’s the opposite illusion
Look right now and you will see they’re only here by the skin of our teeth as it is so take heart and take care of your link with Life
Oh carry it on – Keep saying Oh carry it on – And playing Oh carry it on – And praying
Look right now and you will see we’re only here by the skin of our teeth as it is so take heart and take care of your link with Life is beautiful if you got the sense to take care of your source of perfection
Mother Nature She’s the daughter of God and the source of all protection
Look right now and you will see she’s only here by the skin of her teeth as it is so take heart and take care of your link with Life
Oh carry it on – Keep saying Oh carry it on – And playing Oh carry it on – Keep on praying
Buffy Sainte Marie
My Country Tis Of Thy People You’re Dying
Now that your big eyes have finally opened
Now that you’re wondering how must they feel
Meaning them that you’ve chased across America’s movie screens
Now that you’re wondering “how can it be real?”
That the ones you’ve called colourful, noble and proud
In your school propaganda
They starve in their splendor?
You’ve asked for my comment I simply will render
My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.
Now that the longhouses breed superstition
You force us to send our toddlers away
To your schools where they’re taught to despise their traditions.
Forbid them their languages, then further say
That American history really began
When Columbus set sail out of Europe, then stress
That the nation of leeches that conquered this land
Are the biggest and bravest and boldest and best.
And yet where in your history books is the tale
Of the genocide basic to this country’s birth,
Of the preachers who lied, how the Bill of Rights failed,
How a nation of patriots returned to their earth?
And where will it tell of the Liberty Bell
As it rang with a thud
O’er Kinzua mud
And of brave Uncle Sam in Alaska this year?
My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying
Hear how the bargain was made for the West:
With her shivering children in zero degrees,
Blankets for your land, so the treaties attest,
Oh well, blankets for land is a bargain indeed,
And the blankets were those Uncle Sam had collected
From smallpox-diseased dying soldiers that day.
And the tribes were wiped out and the history books censored,
A hundred years of your statesmen have felt it’s better this way.
And yet a few of the conquered have somehow survived,
Their blood runs the redder though genes have paled.
From the Grand Canyon’s caverns to craven sad hills
The wounded, the losers, the robbed sing their tale.
From Los Angeles County to upstate New York
The white nation fattens while others grow lean;
Oh the tricked and evicted they know what I mean.
My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.
The past it just crumbled, the future just threatens;
Our life blood shut up in your chemical tanks.
And now here you come, bill of sale in your hands
And surprise in your eyes that we’re lacking in thanks
For the blessings of civilization you’ve brought us,
The lessons you’ve taught us, the ruin you’ve wrought us
Oh see what our trust in America’s brought us.
My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.
Now that the pride of the sires receives charity,
Now that we’re harmless and safe behind laws,
Now that my life’s to be known as yourheritage,
Now that even the graves have been robbed,
Now that our own chosen way is a novelty
Hands on our hearts we salute you your victory,
Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocrisy
Pitying the blindness that you’ve never seen
That the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory
They were never no more than carrion crows,
Pushed the wrens from their nest, stole their eggs, changed their story;
The mockingbird sings it, it’s all that he knows.
“Ah what can I do?” say a powerless few
With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye
Can’t you see that their poverty’s profiting you.
My country ’tis of thy people you’re dying.
Universal Soldier
He’s five feet two and he’s six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He’s all of 31 and he’s only 17
He’s been a soldier for a thousand years
He’s a Catholic, a Hindu, an athiest, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn’t kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you
And he’s fighting for Canada,
he’s fighting for France,
he’s fighting for the USA,
and he’s fighting for the Russians
and he’s fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we’ll put an end to war this way
And he’s fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it’s for the peace of all
He’s the one who must decide
who’s to live and who’s to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls
But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He’s the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can’t go on
He’s the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can’t you see
this is not the way we put an end to war
Three superb songs with real bite and meaning! My choice is My Country Tis of your People You’re dying. The passion and anguish is palpable.
Which one do you go for and why?
Big THANK YOU to all those people purchasing my books!! Please leave a review on Amazon!!
Pete Seeger Quotes – Wisdom and compassion with environmental awareness thrown in.
I find Pete Seeger a bit of an enigma. Some of the songs he sings are twee and the sing-alongs are crap but then there is the harder side. The man speaks out against wrong, writes songs of great social import, was a staunch environmentalist and was prepared to suffer for what he believed in. He would not be moved.
His version of Which Side Are You On is skin tingling. (This isn’t the best version)
Pete was in the Almanac Singers with Woody Guthrie and learnt a lot from Woody’s genius and uncompromising ways.
Here’s a few of my favourite quotes of Pete’s.
If there’s something wrong, speak up!
If only more people did that. If only more people became involved. We might get more things done.
It’s a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.
If we don’t engage with people who think differently we cannot learn what they think and we cannot learn what they think. Mutual respect is crucial. If you want to change somebody’s mind you have to talk to them.
Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don’t.
Education is the answer to most problems. We have to teach people to think, understand and develop empathy and compassion.
Being generous of spirit is a wonderful way to live.
Being generous of spirit gets you abused by some – but that’s worth it. If you aren’t open and trusting your spirit suffers.
I’m still a communist in the sense that I don’t believe the world will survive with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer – I think that the pressures will get so tremendous that the social contract will just come apart.
I can see it all unravelling now with Brexit, Clinton and Trump. There is a new cynicism with politics and the establishment. The inequality is too great. People have had enough. We aren’t all in this austerity together. Some have never had it so good.
I came along and was a teenager in the Depression, and nobody had jobs. So I went out hitchhiking, when I met a man named Woody Guthrie. He was the single biggest part of my education.
He’s been a big part of my education too. He taught me to think, care and appreciate the world. He taught me that poor people matter as much as anyone else.
Woody Guthrie Quotes – A man who was a unique individual.
Woody is one of my heroes. He stood for fairness and justice. He stood against racism and supported the poor and exploited. Woody exemplified the Protest song that gave rise to Bob Dylan and the sixties rebellion against the establishment.
Some men rob you with a six-gun — others rob you with a fountain pen.
The bankers and the politicians who support them have robbed the whole world. The people who hold power and pull the strings, who control the inequality and war in order to create profit, rob everyone. The system is corrupt. For someone to earn in 45 minutes more than an average man can earn from all the hard work of a full year is simply wrong.
The world is filled with people who are no longer needed — and who try to make slaves of all of us — and they have their music and we have ours.
Those people who hold the power have created a system that takes from the bottom and gives to the top. The inequality is obscene. There has to be more fairness and justice.
The best way to get to know any bunch of people is to go and listen to their music.
Music is a universal language. It transcends words.
There’s several ways of saying what’s on your mind. And in states and counties where it ain’t too healthy to talk too loud, speak your mind, or even vote like you want to, folks have found other ways of getting the word around. One of the mainest ways is by singing.
Woody sung his truth – about justice and freedom – on picket lines – to the unions and people being exploited.
I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that.
We are all human and should be treated with compassion. Racism, sexism and inequality need addressing.
Love is the only medicine I believe in.
He sound like Jose Mujica the Uruguayan President who said that the only good addiction is love.
A folk song is what’s wrong and how to fix it or it could be
who’s hungry and where their mouth is or
who’s out of work and where the job is or
who’s broke and where the money is or
who’s carrying a gun and where the peace is.
These are the songs we need more of. We need songs about real issues – there’s enough soppy love songs.
You can’t write a good song about a whorehouse unless you’ve been in one.
Woody had not only been in the whorehouses, he’d been on the road, he’d been down and out. He knew what it was like.
The words are the important thing. Don’t worry about tunes. Take a tune, sing high when they sing low, sing fast when they sing slow, and you’ve got a new tune.
The words are the important thing.
Bob Dylan – Nobel Prize Winner!
There are few people who have had as much social impact as Bob Dylan. He is a man whose creative skills have flourished throughout the fifty five years of his career. He has reinvented himself time and again. His word skills have been applied to poems, songs, books and interviews. He has been successful at everything he turned his hand to – whether that be poetry, song, writing or hosting Radio Shows.
His career can be viewed in a number of ways. Chronologically it reveals a bit of a chameleon
Stage 1 – Folk-Blues.
I first encountered Bob in the early sixties when my friend Charlie had a job as a merchant seaman and brought his first album back from the States. He played it to me and told me (a young lad of about thirteen) that Bob was going to be big and would have hits if he released singles. I didn’t believe him. I was into Blues and Woody Guthrie but I didn’t hear anything great on that first album. It was reasonably folk-blues in my opinion – I’d heard Fixin’ To Die played better.
Stage 2 – Acoustic Masterpieces of songwriting
Then came a trio of acoustic masterpieces (Freewheelin’, The Times They are A-Changing and Another side of). Bob had moved from covering folk-blues to doing his own songs. And boy what songs they were. He had started basing his style on Woody Guthrie but this took song writing to a new level. He took up Woody’s themes of social justice and ran with them. His melded in poetry to take them to a new level of complexity, imagery and power.
There were songs of Civil Rights like the Ballad of Emmett Till, The Ballad of Hollis Brown, Only a Pawn in the Game, Oxford Town, Chimes of Freedom, To Ramona
There were songs about the futility of war and nuclear war – Blowin’ in the Wind. Masters of War, A Hard Rains Gonna Fall, Let me Die in My Footsteps, With God on our Side
There were love songs that were miles away from the standard pop trivia. These were mature poems – Don’t Think Twice it’s Alright, Restless Farewell, Boots of Spanish Leather, One Too Many Mornings, All I Really Want To Do
There were songs about the racist establishment and communist haters – Talkin’ John Birch Society Blues, When the Ship Comes in
There were humorous songs with a message – I shall be Free Number 10, Talkin’ Bear Mountain
Bob opened people’s eyes to what was going on. He articulated people’s feelings. He motivated and aroused, he spelt it out, highlighted it and got a whole new generation turned on to social injustice and antiwar. He raised our sensibilities and empowered us to try to put things right. That is something that has never died in me.
And yes – he did release singles and Times They Are A-Changing was a big hit.
Joan Baez adopted him. Peter Paul and Mary popularised him and he was lauded by everyone as a poetic genius, songwriter extraordinaire, social activator, Protest Singer, and all-round genius – the voice of a generation.
Not only that but his songs were being covered by Beat Musicians. Pop and Rock was a teenage music. The lyrics (apart from the odd Chuck Berry one here and there – like Too Much Monkey Business) were all about love, cars and school. Bob changed that. The Animals, Byrds and Manfred Mann covered his songs and created FolkRock. But more importantly bands like the Beatles were freed from the normal strictures of the Pop/Rock song to experiment, get poetic and tell stories with real social importance. It transformed Rock into a more mature, adult structure, more complex, meaningful and poetic. That all came to fruition in the late sixties underground. Without Dylan we wouldn’t have had the later Beatles, Pink Floyd, Doors, Country Joe and the Fish, Buffalo Springfield, Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band, Jefferson Airplane, later Rolling Stones, Traffic, Jimi Hendrix, Cream or the like. He opened minds to the possibilities.
Stage 3 – The Electric explosion
At the height of this deification Bob transformed himself. He’d always been a rocker and seized the opportunity to go electric. He left behind the Civil Rights and Antiwar songs and developed the poetry a stage further into the flow of consciousness of the Beat Generation. There was still a social message but it was interspersed with all manner of strange underworld denizens and imagery.
Phase 2 had been incredible by phase 3 was mind -blowing. He released 3 albums that blew everyone’s minds (though some took longer to adjust than others). He produced a sound like nobody had ever heard. With the power of the Butterfield Blues Band (Mike Bloomfield on searing guitar) at Newport and then a variety of musicians and the Hawks in the Studio and on tour. Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde were extraordinary in every respect. Everything about them was new – the sound, the song structure, the lyrics and the appearance. He took Rock by the short and curlies and shook it up.
There were barbed social songs – It’s Alright Ma I’m Only Bleeding, Subterranean Homesick Blues, Maggie’s Farm, Positively Fourth Street, Gates of Eden, Ballad of a Thin Man, It Takes a lot to Laugh, It Takes A Train to Cry, From a Buick 6, Tombstone Blues, Like a Rolling Stone, Desolation Row, Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues
Love songs of incredible beauty and lyricism – Love minus Zero/No Limit, Mr Tambourine Man, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, Queen Jane Approximately
Then the awesome majesty of what must be the greatest album of all-time – (apart from Roy Harper and depending what mood I’m in) – Blonde on Blonde – ever track a poetic masterpiece of imagery and imagination.
1 Rainy Day Women #12 & 35
2 Pledging My Time
3 Visions of Johanna
4 One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)
5 I Want You
6 Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again
7 Leopard‐Skin Pill‐Box Hat
8 Just Like a Woman
9 Most Likely You Go Your Way and I’ll Go Mine
10 Temporary Like Achilles
11 Absolutely Sweet Marie
12 4th Time Around
13 Obviously Five Believers
14 Sad‐Eyed Lady of the Lowlands
If that doesn’t blow your mind nothing will. There was nothing quite like this James Dean ultra-hip, mercury-mouthed, super-cool, poetic demon. No-one looked like him, sounded like him or could be as sharp.
But the guy was strung out on amphetamine, stressed to the heavens, hounded on all sides and driven insane with the demands for product, performances, books and interviews. It was a treadmill.
It had to end and it did. He crashed and decided to use it as a break. He did not want to be the Voice of a Generation or any part of this machine. He quit. He cleaned himself up.
Stage 4 – Opting Out
He bought a house in Woodstock, shacked up with the Band and started playing the old stuff, writing simpler and doing what was basically Americana. There were no obligations and we saw a simpler in-hip Dylan emerge who sang with Johnny Cash on Country songs and adopted a low-key image and produced three mediocre albums – the OK John Wesley Harding (with the great All Along the Watchtower), the lamentable Nashville Skyline (Which I smashed and threw away the day I bought it) and the dreadful Self-Portrait (Which I didn’t bother buying). He did a poor performance at the Isle of Wight and we all reckoned he was gone.
Stage 5 – the Return
Well New Morning was a slight return but it was with the albums Planet Waves, Blood on the Tracks, Desire and Street Legal, that we saw any of the real power return. It did not get to the peak of those sixties albums but these were really good. The poetry and imagery were there with tracks like Isis, Dirge, Forever Young, Tangled Up in Blue, Idiot Wind, Shelter From the Storm, Hurricane, Oh Sister, Sarah and Senor (Tales of Yankee Power).
This was the time of the live Rolling Thunder Review with nits attempt to bring people together and create some of that spirit again.
Stage 6 – The Religious holiday
Just when we were getting to hope that he might just begin to produce something absolutely majestic he dumped it all and saw the light. We had to tolerate two albums of Born Again sermonising. Least said.
Stage 7 – Mediocrity (by comparison to his own heights)
There followed a string of albums that were alright – Shot of love, Infidels, Empire Burlesque, Knocked Out Loaded, Down in the Groove, Oh Mercy, Under the Red Sky, Good As I Been to You, World Gone Wrong
Stage 8 – Renaissance of a patchy sort
The great Time out of Mind heralded a return to form and that was followed up with Love and Theft, Modern Times, Together Through Life and then the dubious Christmas in the Heart, The Tempest, Shadows in the Night and Fallen Angels.
These were the days when he did his fabulous Radio Shows and wrote the brilliant Chronicles.
So here we are. He deservedly receives the Nobel Prize for Literature. Nobody deserves it more.!!
I look forward to Leonard Cohen, Roy Harper, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Nick Harper receiving their due recognition now.
Well done Bob – We all owe you the world!! From scruffy Woody urchin through James Dean Rebel, Country hick, Thunderous mannequin to poet, radio presenter, novelist and chronicler – you’ve taken us on a journey!
Tom Joad – Woody Guthrie
Woody is one of my heroes. He stood up against wrongs regardless. He stood up against racism, the exploitative bosses and for equality and the rights of all people.
Tom Joad is one of my favourite songs of his. He encapsulated the whole of John Steinbeck’s superb book – The Grapes of Wrath – in one song. It is the story of the dust bowl – the people driven off their land by climate change and the banks – the exploitation, starvation, desperation and violence.
But Woody’s song was a song of defiance. No matter how big the enemy is you stand up for what is right. No backing down!
Excerpt – Woody Guthrie – Tom Joad
Ever’body might be just one big soul
Well it looks that a-way to me
Everywhere that you look, in the day or night
That’s where I’m a-gonna be, Ma
That’s where I’m a-gonna be
Wherever little children are hungry and cry
Wherever people ain’t free
Wherever men are fightin’ for their rights
That’s where I’m a-gonna be, Ma
That’s where I’m a-gonna be.
That’s where I’m gonna be too!