Bluz – Turn Down for What [Video]

By Button Poetry

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Bluz, performing at IWPS 2019 in San Diego, CA.

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Button Poetry is committed to developing a coherent and effective system of production, distribution, promotion and fundraising for spoken word and performance poetry.

We seek to showcase the power and diversity of voices in our community. By encouraging and broadcasting the best and brightest performance poets of today, we hope to broaden poetry’s audience, to expand its reach and develop a greater level of cultural appreciation for the art form.

Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)

0:02
In the beginning, they wanted you silent,
0:05
wanted you to turn down.
0:07
But when you were born, you were born with our skin,
0:11
and the skin was the soundtrack to our history,
0:13
an old slave’s new freedom song,
0:15
the rhythm of a boom box in your chest became movement.
0:18
When you were born, you were born so loud
0:22
because God composed you with jazz hands.
0:24
Through Big Bang theory, he big banged you out on beat machine.
0:28
You are a ninth wonder,
0:29
walking with J Dilla dripping through your veins.
0:32
You got the genius of Herbie Hancock back ready to explode.
0:36
You got Otis Redding in your chin, Hendrix on your liver,
0:39
Kanye in full concert through your chin.
0:41
There’s blues in your bones, and gospel in your laughter, boy.
0:45
Turned down, for what?
0:49
Because the music inside you scares them.
0:51
Scares them enough to dump bullets into your vehicle at a gas station.
0:55
For the day a Michael Dunn pulls a gun on you
0:57
for how loud your skin sounded,
0:59
that he couldn’t even hear his own ignorance and fear
1:03
over the cranked up decibels
1:04
of God, rock, rock, rocking through your body.
1:07
I want you to tell me, what song were your eyes playing?
1:10
Which station was your smile tuned into?
1:12
It must have been a proud one, sounded like heaven.
1:14
You get called home,
1:15
it’s like you and Trayvon are now the theme songs
1:17
that these black boys tend to die to.
1:19
Turned down, for what?
1:22
So they can forget how beautiful you sounded,
1:24
how your voice echoed back against the society
1:27
that best sees you dying in the millions on YouTube,
1:30
that best views you as a problem solved
1:32
by pretending that you, your right and your justice don’t exist.
1:36
The close of your casket will be deafening,
1:38
it will never be BDS-coded so you won’t hear it on the radio,
1:42
although your death will always be requested.
1:44
It’s like they gave these boys prison bars to romp through,
1:48
like they gave them a shoddy record deal of a court-appointed lawyer,
1:50
and keep getting screwed.
1:52
We can’t pump up the jam like we used to,
1:54
too busy ducking down and dodging bullets aimed at you.
1:57
This caliber of music they’re giving these black boys to dance to is dangerous,
2:02
track produced by Jim Crow America.
2:04
They threw you a holy mackerel of a Macklemore MC
2:07
to distract you from hearing
2:08
that black boys in Oakland and LA still dying.
2:12
They got black boys in Charlotte and New York still dying.
2:14
The sound of their bodies falling was so turned up.
2:18
The sound of mothers crying was so turned up,
2:20
their eardrums erupted and faded into white noise.
2:23
Black boys, I don’t ever want you to forget
2:25
the volume of your greatness,
2:27
how scared they are because of how big you sound,
2:30
and when they ask you to turn your spirit down,
2:32
I want you to turn them around and show them how your soul gets kronked,
2:35
that’s when you ought to turn around
2:37
and let the sound of God pull out your mouth,
2:39
and then you tell them, “Turn down, for what?”
2:44
(applause and cheering)

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This post was previously published on YouTube.

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