October 12, 2012

"Are My Hands Clean?" by Sweet Honey in the Rock, Live at Carnegie Hall



How about it? Are your hands clean?

2 comments:

  1. The audio quality of this YouTube post leaves a great deal to be desired, as do 'most all YouTube posts. It took me several listenings to get it all.

    As an aid and a courtesy to those with insufficient patience to dope it out, and because I think everyone should hear the message, I'm adding the words here:

    "I wear garments touched by hands from all over the world
    35% cotton, 65% poylester

    The journey begins in Central America
    In the cotton fields of El Salvador
    In a province soaked in blood
    Pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun
    Pulling cotton for $2.00 a day

    Then we move on up to another rung

    Cargill
    A top-40 trading conglomerate
    Takes the cotton through the Panama Canal
    Up the Eastern Seaboard
    Comin' to the US of A for the first time

    In South Carolina at the Burlington Mills
    Joins a shipment of polyester filament
    Courtesy of the New Jersey petrochemical mills of duPont
    duPont strands of filament begins
    In the South American country of Venezuela
    Where oil riggers bring up oil from the earth for $6.00 a day.

    Then Exxon
    The largest oil company in the world
    Upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad & Tobago
    Then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic seas
    To the factories of duPont
    On the way to the Burlington Mills in South Carolina
    To meet the cotton from the blood-soaked fields of El Salvador

    In South Carolina
    Burlington factories hum with the business
    Of weaving oil and cotton into miles of fabric for Sears
    Who takes its bounty back into the Caribbean Sea
    Headed for Haiti this time

    May she be one day soon free

    Far from the Port au Prince palace
    Third-world women toil doing piece-work
    To Sears' specifications for $3.00 a day
    My sisters make my blouse

    It leaves the third world for the last time
    Coming back into the sea to be sealed in plastic for me

    This third-world sister

    And I go to the Sears department store
    Where I buy my blouse
    On sale for 20% discount

    Are my hands clean?"

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    Replies
    1. For me, you're right . . . I have a difficult time understanding some lyrics without a written text . . . thanks . . . I've got a challenge for your (perhaps unfair - as most challenges probably are or the challenger wouldn't be comfortable issuing the challenge) but I am working to post something on my favorite first paragraphs of books . . . a first paragraph (in any kind of work) that has a resonance beyond, "hello, sit down, I'll tell you a story . . . " (though some authors have mastered that type of introduction . . . ). Anyway, thanks for the transcript, it helps my appreciation . . . and no, my hands are not clean.

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