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MotownRoger Guenveur Smith said, " you like black music but youhate black people, you like black music but you hate blackpeople."Growing up, I liked black music and I did not know any blackpeople.In the suburbs of Houston, your only black friends are DianaRoss, Sam Cook, and Otis Redding.So here's what I knew about black people:They liked to be in love.If someone could love them back, that was even better.They liked to do the twist.They liked Jesus just as much as Jesus liked them.They ended up on a lot of chain gangs, but at least it'swork and at least you get to sing.They're waiting on some kind of change to come, but no onewould tell me what that change was.So I knew that somewhere in Georgia, a man's screaming butno one's holding a gun to his head.See, Lee Moses is in love and his woman been running aroundon him.Now, the bass is going into its fifth bar and the guitarshave already been playing for three and the horn players arespitting on their valves and Lee's gotta tell them, he'sgotta let them know his mamma was right, "She ain't no kindLetras de cancioneswoman."And the horns are screaming, now Lee's screaming.Now this is what falling out of love sounds like.Ma Rainey said, "White people love how the blues come out,but they don't know how it got in there."High school was the first time I saw the Birmingham firehoses, the first time "Steal Away to Jesus" meant anythingmore than quiet prayer.Now, when Sam's having a party, everybody's swinging, itsounds like, "Thank god, let's dance ‘cause the whitepeople ain't here yet."Sounds like, "Tomorrow I might get shot or arrested, soplease, Mr. DJ, keep those records playing."I still sing along like no one ever died, like I can scrubaway white guilt with a soft shoe shuffle.But Sam could have been singing about me; he could have beensinging about my parents.I don't know if my ancestors posed in some swamp in whiterobes with burning crosses, so tell me, can I sing about achain gang if I'm the one holding the whip?When I do the twist in my kitchen, am I jumping Jim Crow?If I sing about strange fruit blowing in the wind, am Isinging about my family tree?So I went home to Texas.I turned on the radio.Otis was still sitting on that dock in that bay.I cannot understand the pain that made the artist.This does not I can't understand the art.We poets, we people of the lamp and lighters of dark places.This is what we know:Take your pain, make it beautiful, make them dance.It's so hard to hate something beautiful.It's so hard to hate someone who is capable of love.It's so hard to hate someone when they're singing. From Letras Mania