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lyrics

"humphf"

for big red

they say monk
couldn't play the music. they say, monk,
he limited
by his own vision

& just can't play right. monk,
he too weird. his music
don't sound right, and he gets up
& dances

while he's playing,
like a jackleg preacher
at a revival meeting
in an old tent
in north Carolina.

they say monk sound too much
like a whorehouse piano player
from some pre-harlem ghetto
stuffed with back-woods renegades

& sporting women & gamblers,
street-level intellectuals. they say
monk, what is that shit
you trying to play, you just can't

do it that way,
you too way out baby,
that stuff ain't you. & monk
in his infinite knowledge

& wisdom, shoots a grin
from behind the piano,
wiggles his ass on the stool,
lays down another few bars

of utter genius,
turns it over to the tenor player
& rises to dance beside the piano,
some more of that old north carolina boogaloo

—oak park, mi may 30, 1984.

credits

from Let's Go Get Em', released November 1, 2020
John Sinclair

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John Sinclair Detroit, Michigan

"Sinclair is an iconic figure of ‘60s counterculture, famous for, among other things, having co-founded the anti-racist White Panther Party"

daily.bandcamp.com/features/beatnik-youth-interview

"John has taken the Blues, many Blues, many Blues singers, their words, their feeling, their lives, their conditions, the places and traces of where they was and is.

--Amiri Baraka.
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