Go Ask Angela

by colleen kattau

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about

I was reading "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander, and her work led me to revisit Angela Davis's writing on prison abolition, which largely informs the lyrics. I wondered if addressing themes presented by these writers could work with a Celtic melody that I'd been a bit obsessed with playing. This song is the result.
In addition to songwriting and performing I am a singer and director for the Syracuse Community Choir (NY). This past Solstice we performed the song with a lovely arrangement by Emery Schramm. Please contact me if you are interested in the arrangement!

lyrics

Go Ask Angela words/ music Colleen Kattau

Won’t let go of the old Jim Crow. They put Mumia on death row dom dom…
Fabricated evidence
White law on a mission
Lies piled high over innocence
Forty years in prison
Framed for who he was,
and the color of the skin
How many other treated just like him?
From Attica to Wounded Knee
The conqueror makes his way oh
Down through time’s atrocities
And back to present day oh
And the violence feeds on the guns and fire, And reform is the fuel for the flame
Profits fly high as the
barbed wire rises
In the prison pipeline game
But it’ll all crack when we push back,
And imagine another kind of nation.
Turn the page of a violent age
and the key is education and reparation
Spirit can’t be broken by bars or chains dom day
Jail the body but the mind remains dom day
It rises over the prison cell
The people’s will is stronger
Time to ring the liberation bell
and tear the walls asunder
Time to let go of the Old Jim Crow
New or old it’s the same Jim Crow
Go ask Angela she’s the one who knows

credits

released January 6, 2024

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colleen kattau New York

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