The poet rode waves that peaked on accusation and explanation:
you weren't there when whips cracked the backs
I was there I didn't see you
The crowd was shouting back to Roger as he voiced its feeling, gave
air to black peoples' grievance at the commercial success of white bands
imitating black bands. "The Music Man" continued. Locating himself
as the heir to a culture formed from the experiences of Afrikans in enslavement.
Black music is his birthright and we white people who play this music and
sell it out by selling it off in watered down forms were being called to
task. He said that he was there on the slave ships, that he had sung the
songs of slaves, that he was those people and they were him, in him now,
calling his poem, inflecting his voice with its Trinian accent, fuelling
that fire that gave birth to his passion. The last verse fell off of a crescendo
and he slowed down easing us to the close:
i am the music man/ i am the music man/i am the music man
and you're a t'ief.
He left the stage to acclaim from his peers. The MC came on and all
he said was "Yo Red," which was my poetry call sign. Speaking
to me in poetry. The whole poem was addressed to white people working with
black forms. People like me. In fact, the poem was addressed directly to
me. I stood there dealing with my feelings of disorientation. I was being
called out, again. Twice in one night. Something was happening. Something
I couldn't deny. A challenge to what I was doing surrounding myself with
the signs of black cultural forms.
Wiggers and Wannabes: White Ethnicity in Contemporary Youth Culture.
