Africa

I thought I would take a break from my usual dark protest songs with this more upbeat offering. The lyrics were inspired by a trip I took to East Africa in 1990. The instrumentation gives it kind of the feel of Paul Simon's Graceland album. Enjoy! My lyrics and cover photo (from Ngorongoro crater), Carol's production, music by AI (suno) Lyrics: Africa Africa is like our souls Long dark green hills Loping into a distance which can't be measured. Alive like nothing we have met before And longed to meet. We travel never reaching there Those colors dependent on a distance We never find ourselves inside The singular color that lies on the hill Reflects from the sky. Velvet green curves Mounting from the labial pink of flamingo lakes. Waving sedges lifting ragged edges that meet and defy The horizon before they melt into the sky. We stop in villages along the way Stricken into poverty by the distance of that light Those unattainable greens. The reality of roads and the lines marked on our maps Fail to coincide Except that passing through these places a thread, Woven out of colors that defy a name, remains, Etched upon the eye. The road becomes, wherever one has travelled Ruts declining into mud in rainy season Quiver in the heat in dry. So, we feel our footprints as something left, To go their own way after we pass by Walking through the bush with our dreams. And this is travel This is the soul That we can never reach. The wildebeest with lowered head Outrigger tracks That waves rinse from the beach, Those villages, Those tongues like music Resisting understanding. The poverty The distances we cannot reach. We travel and plan And change our plans, Roads play tricks on us, Facts change Changing what we understand. In sleep I still can feel, Those green hills loping Off into distances which can't be measured the strange stars like a shuttle, stitching day and night together I feel my soul like those villages Stricken into a poverty Which dreams weave with unnamed colors Into treasure