歌词
CHAPTER 1 GENESIS
Here's a brief family history,
because these are the pieces of my puzzle
that are the most important.
Both of my grandparents on my pops's side were half black,
half Cherokee Indian from the dirty South
—Grandpops from Dallas,Texas,and Grandmoms from Richmond,Virginia.
Budd and Bernice Johnson were big-time in the day.
Grandmoms,who had the rare combination of dark brown skin and very soft,straight hair,
was one of the fist Cotton Club dancers
at the world-famous nightclub in Harlem.
Singer-actress Lena Horne,
who also danced at the Cotton Club before her rise to fame,
was one of her close friends coming up,
In order to be a black person inside that club,
your complexion had to be lighter than a brown paper bag
or you had to be part of the entertainment or the help,
and that's where my grandparents met,
My grandmother told me that my grandfather,
who played in the club's band every night,
wanted her to stop dancing there,
but I don't think she stopped until she was ready.
Grandpops was a world-famous jazz musician,
now in the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame,
who played the sexophone and clarinet
and was friends with the major jazz players of that time.
Billy Eckstine,Dizzy Gillespie,Gary Bartz,
and Frank Foster would come over to the crib to chill.
My grandfather wrote his own sheet music and released many abums.
He helped teach Quincy Jones to read and write music
and toured the world as a member of one of Quincy's fist big bands.
On weekends as a kid, late at night,Grandpops-or Big Budd,
as they called him-would sit me on his lap
and try to teach me all these funny-looking music notes
while he puffed away on his tobacco pipe.
It was a foreign language,and I was too young.
Soon after the Cotton Club gig,
Grandmoms opened her own dance school in Jamaica,Queens—
the Bernice Johnson Dance School.
She started the business in the basement of her house
with only a handful of students
but it grew so big
that she became the first black woman to own a building
on Merrick Boulevard and dubbed herself the H.N.I.C.,
Head Nigga In Charge.In the seventies and eighties,
movies like Saturday Night Fever,Fame,Flashdance, Beat Street,
and Footloose, plus the Michael Jackson,breakdancing,
and rap-music craze,made people really want to dance,
Her school was a huge success.
But don't let the good fortune, showbiz, and spotilghts fool you:
My grandparents and parens came up during the 1940s,
'50s,and '60s during major segregation, racism, lynching,
and pure hatred for black people.
When they gave birth to my father,Budd Johnson Jr.,
they were very well-off moneywise,
so growing up my pops was konwn as the rich kid in South Jamaica.
He got into a lot of fights to prove himself in the steets,
extra-wild shit to show people he wasn't no punk.
This was my pops's side of the family-Moms's side was different.
On Mom's side, my great-great-great-grandpops
William Jefferson White and great-great-great-grandmoms
Josephine White were 5 percent black and 95 percent lrish.
Her entire side of the family could pass for Caucasian.
Great-great-great Grandpops wasn't a joke.
He was a minnister who founded and built Morehouse College
in the basement of his Baptist church in Augusta,Georgia,in 1867.
When I found that out,I had to pick my jaw up from the floor,
So many famous black men graduated from Morehouse,
including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,Samuel L.Jackson,and Spike Lee.
William's grandson, my great-grandfather William J.Shaw,
was secretary of the Republican Central Committee of Georgia
from 1926 to 1961,the only
black member to hold a political position in Georgia at that time.
In 1950, he established the fist post office for blacks in Atlanta.
Black people had to travel outside of Atlanta for postal service before that.
Finding out about my family tree blew my mind.
At first,I was disgusted that I had white blood in me.
All I could think about was
some white slave master raping my black ancestors.
But then I learned to accept it.
My father, Budd Johnson Jr.,
was born September 14, 1942,
and raised in my grandparents' Jamaica, Queens, house
right behind Guy Brewer Boulevard.
My moms, Fatima Frances Johnson, was born July 29, 1944,
and raised in Harlem until age six,
when her family moved ot Sounth Jamaica projects
right next to my pops.
Her mother's name was Bernie Johnson,
similar to my pops's mother,Bernice Johnson.
Moms and pops met at Grandmom's dance school.
Pops was eleven and he loved playing the drums.
My moms was nine,
a girl whih a sweet heart who loved to sing and dance.
She took every class there was.
Their puppy love was short-lived.
Pops thought he was a player,
and Moms left him when she found out
that he had a handful of girlfriens.