Trinbago Will Be Nice Again [Song]

Uploaded by dedave639
TRINBAGO WILL BE NICE AGAIN
By David Emmanuel Henry

If we could love one another
Regardless of race or hue of skin
If we could to listen to each other
Trinbago WILL be nice again.

If we could take responsibility
For each choice that cause us pain
We could start now, immediately
To make Trinbago nice again.

If we could learn if yuh plant too-too
Yuh can’t expect to harvest cane
If we start now, then later on cue
Trinbago WILL be nice again.

If we teach the youth how to use their mind
Instead of how to worship bling
There’ll be less crime, they’ll use their time
To make Trinbago nice again.

If we reward good behavior
And punish wrong in a quick timing
If excuses, we refuse to offer
Trinbago WILL be nice again

If our concern is what we could do
Instead of who we could blame and flame
Then we are on we way fuh true
To make Trinbago nice again.

If we understand we are all children
Of Papa Trini and Mama ‘Bagonian
And we put a stop to discrimination
Trinbago WILL be nice again.

If we could let our kindness show
And live to love, not just for gain
Showers of blessings will rain down fuh so
To make Trinbago nice again.

May we make Trinbago nice again
We want Trinbago nice again
May we make Trinbago nice again
We want Trinbago nice again
Come! Leh we make Trinbago nice again.

© 2005 David Emmanuel Henry All Rights Reserved. Posted with the kind permission of David Emmanuel Henry
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A Note From The Gull

I first posted the lyrics for this song on 2/26/06 and I am reposting it today after listening with pleasure to David Emmanuel Henry's earnest performance uploaded three years after on YouTube.

Something about the gentle, uplifting message and incantatory tone of this poem captured this gull’s heart. The assertion that Trinbago will be nice again, is not the product of a lazy optimism of the “God is a Trini” variety, but is prefaced by conditions, concrete suggestions for how we can bring about this change to make Trinbago nice again. I cannot say that God is a Trini but we carry the name of the Trinity/Trikuta. He must be noting with some embarrassment and displeasure that some of us are not trying very hard to help ourselves.

David directs our attention to what he considers to be the issues at the heart of our problems: racism, disrespect, wrong choices, a lack of foresight, the expectation that we will reap what we have not sown, neglecting our responsibility to instill the right habits and values in our children, a lack of vigilance and swift punishment for wrongdoing, insufficient or total lack of recognition of the efforts of good citizens, the tendencies to find excuses to explain our failures and to point the finger of blame at others, and the pursuit of individual advancement at the expense of a spirit of community and love for each other.

So many people are throwing up their hands, walking away or going to the other extreme of calling down the vengeance of Moko upon this nation, when the solution is the simplest thing of all – Much More Love. Love in the home, love in the communities, love in the corridors of power. Of one thing we can be certain, the man who can calculatingly make decisions that will injure his people, or who can take up a weapon in cold blood to murder his brother, did not in his lifetime, receive the love and care that some of us can take for granted, not in his home, not from his teachers, and not from his fellow man. Just take a moment to think about it, really think about it. Put aside the anger and the hurt and the despair and the understandable need to blame, and think about it.

Today, I am flying to Carupano. That’s to the southwest of us, on the coast of Venezuela. Two of my gull pals will accompany me. We like to do that every now and again. We go, stay for a day or so and then start back for Los Iros. We do it just for the immense pleasure of being greeted on our return by the beautiful, green hills, and the coastline of our Trinidad. Sometimes, you have to lose something before you realize what you let slip away. Sometimes, you have to leave, so that you can really come back home. Sometimes, you have to step back from the things that distract and dismay, to regain your focus.

Hold on. Don’t give up. Don’t give in.

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

I Will Always Be There For You [Song]

Uploaded by akeemds

I WILL ALWAYS BE THERE FOR YOU
Performed by Melanie Hudson
Composed by David Rudder

I remember when you children were weak and hungry
I took you to my bosom, fed you my oil
And even when you took and wasted and left me drained
There was always love for you in my soil
Even when my older children, they try to shame me
Setting no rules for the younger ones
Bringing such grief and sadness into my old soul
In the end they still my daughters and sons

Chorus:
I will always be there for you
No matter what you do
Whatever joy or pain that you are going through
I will always be there for you
I will be, I will be, I will be always there for you.

Everybody always call me a blessed mother
"Mama Trini, God must love you." they say
Hell or high water, I would just rise and embrace you
Protecting my children in every way
Even when you fight and and argue 'bout different fathers
Remember, the Middle Passage brought them straight to my door
Mama never worry about no race, I just loved them
And so mih blood does boil when you start to war.

Chorus:
I will always be there for you
No matter what you do
Whatever joy or pain that you are going through
I will always be there for you
I will be, I will be, I will be always there for you.

So if you really want to make your old lady happy
If you really want to fill me with joy
All you got to do is start looking out for each other, I mean
Man and woman check for the girls and boys
To those of you who sow your seeds and then run like crazy
I want to see you turn and commit your hearts
And those of you who choose to leave, all the rest do your duty
Foolishness will only tear us apart.

Chorus:
And I will always be there for you
No matter what you do
Whatever joy or pain that you are going through
I will always be there for you
I will be, I will be, I will be always there for you.
I will always be there for you
No matter what you do
Whatever joy or pain that you are going through
I will always be there for you
I will be, I will be, I will be always there for you.

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

This song moved me to tears when I first heard it being sung by the melodious voice of the youthful Melanie Hudson and it still has the same effect on me today just reading the lyrics. There are some beautiful sentiments expressed in the song. The underlying themes that I find irresistible are nature’s unbiased benevolence and a mother’s unconditional love. In human society, its manifestation is, not restricted to but, most readily witnessed in the self sacrificing love of many mothers. In nature, we find one example in the rain which as Bob Marley sang, when it falls, does not fall only on one man’s housetop.

This is why the use of the motherland/beneficent nature image speaks powerfully to us all. Most of us have experienced this love in the setting of the family and if we didn’t, then for some it is experienced as a palpable absence as in the woundedness of the unparented/unmothered which haunts and is the driving force behind lifelong searches for consolation. Most of us have been exposed to the teachings, found in the world religions that exhort us to treat all men equally, to love one another and especially our enemies, to answer good with good and evil with good, to forgive each other over and over and over and over again.

Mama Trini cannot help but do otherwise. “I will always be there for you.” She represents nature which provides bountifully and manifests the undying love which is characteristic of divinity. We have forgotten that we are part of this divinity. Many of her children are feeling today a sense of being separated from this divinity, this primal connection, as we careen ever further from the path that venerates and preserves connectedness to nature, to our true selves, to each other. She laments the foolishness that tears us apart, the greedy exploitation of natural resources, racism, failing in our duty to our families and country, failing in general to be the keepers of our brothers.

It is my belief that most Trinidadians, if not all, understand quite well what needs to be done. Many are doing their duty and this is why the centre, despite all the bad news, IS still holding.

"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