Showing posts with label nation building. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nation building. Show all posts

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

A Way To Success (Productivity)

By Mighty Sniper (1968)

Through no fault of our own
We dollar drop down low
And I'm sure it's known
The pressure we might have to undergo
But lucky we have a way
Could make we burden ease up
And if we start from today
Very soon all hardships go stop.

Chorus:
Productivity is We crying need
We must produce heavy if we want to succeed
So pal let we use up we senses and start cutting down all expenses
Because we done see tile score
So let we produce some more

We were once a colony
But Independent now
So - we ain't have nobody
Again to teach us the right way how
No longer can we depend on any Mother Country
And besides - Right now she can't even help she own self
Much more to help we

Chorus:
Productivity is the Nation's call
We must produce heavy otherwise we might fall
Regardless what class you belong to
Produce more that's all we ask of you
Put your shoulders to the wheel
Or all who harden go feel

Right now we should be thinking
Of all the ways we could
So we could stop buying
This big set of Foreign goods
It's no use just complaining
Because it is plain to see
We gotta do something
To keep building up we economy

Chorus:
Productivity is the way to move
We must produce heavy if we wheat to is
This is not a Time for idling
Let we cut out all this skylarking
And every man do his share
To keep we dollars down here

Some folks say they going away
As they hear the dollar drop
But please let me say
This is not the attitude to adopt
I feel whether sink or float
We all should work hand in glove
And do we best to promote
This nation we always boast that we love.

Chorus:
Productivity is the solution
If we want to overcome this situation
We should all fight one for the other
And if together we aspire
My dear friends I do believe
Together we would achieve.