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SPLIT ME IN TWO
By Mighty Dougla
Let us suppose they pass a law,
They don't want people living here anymore
Just suppose they pass a law,
They don't want people living here anymore
Everybody got to find their country
According to your race originally
What a confusion I would cause in the place
They might have to shoot me in space.
Chorus:
Because they sending Indians to India [India] and the Negroes back to Africa,
Can somebody please just tell me, where they sending poor me? [Poor Dougie]
I am neither one nor the other, six of one, half a dozen of the other
If they serious about sending back people for true, they got to split me in two.
From the time I small I in confusion
I couldn't play with no other lil children
If I go by the Negro children to play
They say, "You little coolie, now run away!"
I go by the Indian children next door
They say, "Noweyrian, what you come here for?"
I always by myself like ah lil monkey
Not one single child wouldn't play with me.
Chorus:
So if they sending Indians to India [India] and the Negroes back to Africa,
Can somebody please just tell me, Where they sending poor me? [Poor Dougie]
I am neither one nor the other, six of one, half a dozen of the other
If they serious 'bout sending back people for true, they bound to split me in two.
Hear what happen to me recently
I going down Jogie Road walking peacefully
Some Indians and Negroes rioting
Poor me didn't know not a single thing
But as I enter in Odit Trace
Ah Indian man cuff me straight in mih face
I ran by the Negroes to get rescue
"Look ah coolie!" and them start beating me too.
Chorus:
So if they sending Indians to India [India] and the Negroes back to Africa,
Can somebody please just tell me, where they sending poor me? [Poor Dougie]
I am neither one nor the other, six of one, half a dozen of the other
If they serious 'bout sending back people for true, they bound to split me in two.
Some fellas having a race discussion,
I jump in to give my opinion
A young fella watch me in mih face
He say, "You shut your mouth, you ain't got no race!"
What he said to me was a real insult
But is not I to blame, is mih father fault
When he say I have no race, he did talking true
Instead of having one race, you know I got two.
Chorus:
So if they sending Indians to India [India] and the Negroes back to Africa,
Can somebody please just tell me, where they sending poor me? [Poor Dougie]
I am neither one nor the other, six of one, half a dozen of the other
If they serious 'bout sending back people for true, they bound to split me in two.
Source: The lyrics posted on this blog are often transcribed directly from performances. Although it is my intention to faithfully transcribe I do not get all the words and I have a knack for hearing the wrong thing. Please feel free to correct me or to fill in the words that I miss by dropping me a message via e-mail. I'd be forever grateful. Thanks in advance!
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A Note From The Gull
Thank you, Mighty Dougla.
For outsiders who do not understand this song, it is about the no man's land in which persons who are products of miscegenation can find themselves, especially when they are located within societies which haven't yet fully grasped the fact that humanity trumps ethnicity.
A "dougla" originally referred to a person of mixed East Indian and African ancestry, but it can also be used to include other mixed persons, so you can hear "douglarisation" being used to describe any process of mixture.
The Mighty Dougla is proposing an imaginary, ridiculous solution of being split in two to highlight the actual ridiculous reality of being ostracised because you are caught between two ethnicities which have not yet learned to accept the humanity of the next.
What would be his situation if East Indians and Africans were asked to return to the countries of origin of their ancestors? He finds himself between a rock and a hard place. Because he represents an irreversible fusion, he sees himself as also representing the point of NO RETURN - no return to Mother Africa, no return to Mother India.
The Mighty Dougla never explored the possibility that Mother T&T would never have allowed him to leave or to be cleaved, that she would have hidden him, as her own special creation, safely within the folds of her skirt until the racists had departed.
"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.
A "dougla" originally referred to a person of mixed East Indian and African ancestry, but it can also be used to include other mixed persons, so you can hear "douglarisation" being used to describe any process of mixture.
The Mighty Dougla is proposing an imaginary, ridiculous solution of being split in two to highlight the actual ridiculous reality of being ostracised because you are caught between two ethnicities which have not yet learned to accept the humanity of the next.
What would be his situation if East Indians and Africans were asked to return to the countries of origin of their ancestors? He finds himself between a rock and a hard place. Because he represents an irreversible fusion, he sees himself as also representing the point of NO RETURN - no return to Mother Africa, no return to Mother India.
The Mighty Dougla never explored the possibility that Mother T&T would never have allowed him to leave or to be cleaved, that she would have hidden him, as her own special creation, safely within the folds of her skirt until the racists had departed.
"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.
Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.
Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare
