martha redbone “drums”
from: it’s not on any record, you tube live!
“From the Indian reservation to the governmental school,
Well, they’re goin’ to educate me to the white man’s Golden Rule,
And I’m learning very quickly for I’ve learned to be ashamed,
And I come when they call Billy, though I’ve got an Indian name.
CHORUS: And there are drums beyond the mountain,
Indian drums that you can’t hear.
There are drums beyond the mountain,
And they’re getting mighty near.
And when they think that they’ve changed me, cut my hair to meet their needs,
Will they think I’m white or Indian, quarter-blood or just half-breed?
Let me tell you, Mr. Teacher, when you say you’ll make me right,
In five hundred years of fighting, not one Indian turned white. CHORUS
Well, you thought that I knew nothin’ when you brought me here to school,
Just another empty Indian, just America’s first fool,
But now I can tell you stories that are burnt and dried and old,
But in the shadow of their telling walks the thunder proud and bold. CHORUS
Lone Pine(?) and Sequoyah, Handsome Lake and Sitting Bull,
There’s Mangus Colorado with his sleeves so red and full,
Crazy Horse, the legend, those who bit off Custer’s soul,
They are dead yet they are living with the great Geronimo. CHORUS
Well, you may teach me this land’s history but we taught it to you first.
We broke your hearts and bent your journeys; broken treaties left us cursed.
Even now you have to cheat us, even though you think us tame.
In our losing, we found proudness; in your winning, you found shame. CHORUS
”
This song has a long remarkable history. For starters, it was written by Peter LaFarge in 1965, an important presence in the 1960’s folk protest world but he never made a mark with it. It took Johnny Cash who in the midst of his popularity got Columbia Records to agree to allow him to make an lp devoted to Native American issues called “Bitter Tears.” They reluctantly agreed. “Drums” in the hands of Martha Redbone becomes a tour de force anthem of unrelenting and haunting power.