Watch Out My Children [Song]

Uploaded by IsDePanInMe
See live performance below following the lyrics

WATCH OUT MY CHILDREN
By Ras Shorty I

Spoken: This song is dedicated to all my sons and daughters through the four corners of the earth.

My sons and my daughters, to you I plead
Watch, don't get no horrors but please take heed
I know you don't want no sermon
But my admonition is to guard you against all the evils of life
That create strife and destroy life.

Walk cautiously, children, be alert
Because you have an enemy that's roaming the earth
I know you're young and restless but you don't have to be careless
You see, sober thinking leads unto righteousness
To happiness, spiritual bliss.

That's why I tell you this...

Watch out my children! Watch out my children!
It have a fellow called Lucifer with a bag of white powder
And he don't want to powder your face
But to bring shame and disgrace to the human race.

Leh we sing it again...

Watch out my children! Watch out my children!
It have a fellow called Lucifer with a bag of white powder
And he don't want to powder your face
But to bring shame and disgrace to the human race.

I give you my counsel because I want to see
All you, young people, live righteously
What you feed your mind with forms your characteristics
And shape the path that you must walk tomorrow -
Darkness or glow, joy or sorrow.

That's why I am concerned...

So, Watch out my children! Watch out my children!
It have a fellow called Lucifer with a bag of white powder
And he don't want to powder your face
But to bring shame and disgrace to the human race.

To all my sons and daughters in Germany:
----------- meine Kinder! --------- meine Kinder!
Es ist ein Kerl namens Luzifer mit einer Tüte weißes Pulver

[Your kind assistance needed with translation.]

You are young and your future is ahead of you
Right or wrong, sweet or sour, depends on what you do
Taking the wrong direction will drain your constitution
And promote mental chaos and confusion
Then corruption to the inner man
And that is not God's plan.

To my Spanish children:
¡Cuidado mis hijos!¡Cuidado mis hijos!
Ha un hombre que se llama Lucifer, con una bolsa de polvo blanco
Y él no quiere empolvar tu cara
Pero para traer pena y desgracia para la raza humana.

To my French children:
Attention mes enfants! Attention mes enfants!
Il ya quelqu'un appelé Lucifer avec un sachet de poudre blanche
Et il ne veux pas se poudrer votre visage
Mais apporter honte et disgrace à la race humaine.

To my East Indian children:
[Your kind assistance needed with translation.]

Watch out my children! Watch out my children!
It have a fellow called Lucifer with a bag of white powder
And he don't want to powder your face
But to bring shame and disgrace to the human race.

G.B.T.V. CultureShare ARCHIVES 1995:
RAS SHORTY I & THE LOVE CIRCLE "Watch out my children"

Uploaded by bencult

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, Ras Shorty I.

I have been reading the article "ALL IN THE FAMILY" It was published in Issue No. 70 - November/December 2004 of Caribbean Beat magazine. The excerpt below is taken from this article and gives us some information about this song:

"Any doubts that might have remained about the significance of the Love Circle were dispelled in 1989, with the release of Watch Out My Children, the stirring anti-drugs anthem which remains the group’s best known piece. “It came about when Shorty I went into Port of Spain one day,” Claudette says. “He came home that evening and said, ‘I don’t know what this place coming to.’ He’d seen some young boys just sitting around looking like their life had been wasted. He called one of the young guys and started speaking to him. And they couldn’t explain their life, they couldn’t say what they were even doing tomorrow. And when he looked at them, he realised they were on cocaine.

The Love Circle knew the song was special, and audience reactions bore that out. “We would look at the audience, and it was heart-breaking,” Claudette says. “We would see people with tears coming out their eyes. Because everybody had a situation where they had a young person on drugs of some nature.”

A music video was produced by Banyan in 1989, and in 2002 Watch Out My Children was chosen by the United Nations International Drug Control Programme as its theme song. Ras Shorty I did not live to see its second incarnation, however, for in 2000 he succumbed to bone cancer and died. He was 58. At a massive funeral at Trinity Cathedral in Port of Spain he was hailed as a visionary and cultural pioneer."

Reading about how Ras Shorty I turned his back on many of the things and pursuits that had consumed his attention in his life before, I wondered how many of us dream of doing the same thing but feel trapped by the soul-deadening routines to which we have become enslaved.

This has been my dream ever since I was a child. Don't know why it was that way with me but I recoiled from most of what I encountered in the "developed world" as it is called. Ras Shorty I's transformation was considered "odd" because according to his wife:

"Casting off the flashy clothes she could understand. “But he took off his gold . . . He just started flinging it about the place, by the seaside and elsewhere. That’s why people said he went off. He just wanted to get rid of all that. Bondage, he called it.” She was concerned, too, about his hair, which he had stopped combing — a dramatic political statement by a once meticulously-groomed man. She sat her husband down and counseled him to “take it down a bit . . . be careful you’re not taking up some kind of extremist type of attitude.”" SOURCE

I find absolutely nothing odd at all about throwing away gold. I consider it odd that people actually lust after that crap. I find it odd also that so much that is unnecessary and even toxic is presented to us as essential for our well being and progress...and we swallow the lies, hook, line and sinker.

If you love the song "Castles In The Air" by Don McClean, then you are a kindred spirit, and I hope that we all find that place we've been dreaming about. Instead of a failed relationship with a girl, I think about my failed relationship with the status quo. Ras Shorty I had a dream and he made it a reality. Such courage is rare.

CASTLES IN THE AIR
By Don McClean

And if she asks you why, you can tell her that I told you
That I'm tired of castles in the air,
I've got a dream I want the world to share,
And castle walls just lead me to despair.

Hills of forest green where the mountains touch the sky,
A dream come true, I'll live there till I die,
I'm asking you to say my last goodbye,
The love we knew ain't worth another try.

Save me from all the trouble and the pain
I know I'm weak but I can't face that girl again
Tell her the reasons why I can't remain
Perhaps she'll understand, if you tell it to her plain

But how can words express the feel of sunlight in the morning
In the hills, away from city strife,
I need a country woman for my wife,
I'm city born, but I love the country life.

For I will not be part of her cocktail generation,
Partners waltz, devoid of all romance
The music plays and everyone must dance,
I'm bowing out, I need a second chance.

Save me from all the trouble and the pain
I know I'm weak but I can't face that girl again
Tell her the reasons why I can't remain
Perhaps she'll understand, if you tell it to her plain

And if she asks you why, you can tell her that I told you
That I'm tired of castles in the air,
I've got a dream I want the world to share
And castle walls just lead me to despair.

"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