Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Herb Fields



Herb Fields (Dmin,A#,A)


Secret that my Mamma used to hide from me
I man must have been born in a Herb Field (x3)

Signs of how Babylon hard
They wanna stop INI now from grow I man Herb Farm
And even when a Natty growing fruits and herbs gwaan
I know the Babylon them a spray pesticide
Dem a try fi poison my meditation
So I’m feeling just a little bit under the weather
Cause I don’t have my marijuana (x3)

Secret that my Mamma used to hide from me
I man must have been born in a Herb Field

See a sign of how Babylon hard
Is like everywhere I go nowadays I seem to run up inna road block
And when you stopped by the cops you think of something clever yow
Cause ‘rude bwoy what you charge I for?”
So they took mi down to the station inna mi marina
So I'm feeling just a little bit under the weather
Cause I don’t have, I don’t have my marijuana(x3)

Mix:
Mi she mi haffi wait til Tuesday just fi give a judge a talk
Cause dem lock we up inna negril for a little herb stalk
And now incarcerated on the police station yard
Said I don’t know why they want to make the singer life so hard
Still I have to wait til Tuesday just to get a draw
Don’t know why they want profile I as a outlaw
But I’d rather be an outlaw than to bow to Babylon law (X2)
I got a little message for police commissioner
I wrote a detail letter to the legislator
There’s receptors in your brain for THC Jah man
So don’t you try and fight the herb from Jah land
Or else you end up end up you gone down in Babylon (x2)
When INI a hold a meditation
Cause the senseimilla a Just the healing of the Nation now.

Secret that my Mamma used to hide from me
I man must have been born in a Herb Field


I listen to a lot of reggae these days and this group, Rootz Underground, has got my attention. They sound old, but clearly they are pretty young.

I think it's interesting that the chorus of the songs is "secret that my momma used to hide from me" and the rest of the song is about the authorities (cops) criminalizing marijuana. Is this yet another example of young men blaming their moms for upholding the patriarchy? Another instance where mothers uphold patriarchal law in order to keep their children safe from the kind of system that has the capability to rip families to shreds? Mothers do what they need to do in order to ensure that they have their children in their lives and when the children grow up and see with open eyes they have the nerve to point fingers at their mothers who are between a rock and a hard place their entire lives.

I made a different choice in my life. My son isn't being lied to. We do not go into a different room to smoke marijuana because I am not about to feed into the lies that are propagated by the cops and the two-faced politicians about the effects of marijuana. Who are they to say that I can't safely medicate myself? I'd rather be a stoner who can function happily in society than to be a drunk who operates on a more violent and less functional level. Alcohol is "legal" in my culture, marijuana is not. I don't ever really wonder why my culture is more violent than not due to this fact. Cigarettes, which have been proven to have hundreds of toxic chemical additives in each little death stick, are legal, too. Yet, because we need to be protected from ourselves, we should not smoke marijuana because it could......well, it could get us into legal trouble. Only because of the legal system. It's the end here that justifies the means. Marijuana is less of a health issue than alcohol and cigarettes (no one has ever over-dosed on marijuana nor has ever died due to only smoking marijuana)....but we need to be protected from it, for some reason. Maybe because if the majority of the people smoked marijuana instead of drank alcohol, our culture might be happy and communities might get along and politicians would be in BIG trouble if the people bonded together so.

I've grown marijuana a couple of times through the years, and it's a really good feeling to be able to cultivate your own medication. As with all other herbs that serve to better our health, I believe that marijuana is not just an ordinary herb but an herb for the soul. We've heard of soul food, and soul food feels good and tastes good and is best enjoyed with loved ones. Well, marijuana is soul herbs. Marijuana doesn't antagonize urges to harm or degrade yourself or others. Marijuana makes people feel good. The only reason why so many people get paranoid is because of the legal system. The end justifying the means again. Take away the criminalization, and the people won't feel so PARANOID about feeling GOOD!

There is legislation that is going to be going through congress (again) sometime that is about to protect the states that have already voted for medical marijuana decriminalization laws. Since the feds keep busting into the states' scenes and raiding the the little herb shops for everything they've got, the activists and a few reasonable politicians have gotten together and created legislation that will serve to protect the growing number of people within those states. Since the legislations' creation in 2001, even more states have voted for medical marijuana laws to protect the people. This should be a sign for congress that this bill is not going to go away. It's going to keep coming back until it passes. This issue has grown to the point where politicians are going to start losing their jobs if they don't represent the people on this issue. People are starting to wake up and learn that all the supposed harms of marijuana have been lies for the most part and that marijuana can actually improve the quality of one's life.

I have a feeling that all it's going to take is for some old and outdated dudes to die off and make room for the up and coming generation to take the reins. My generation loves all kinds of drugs. A lot of us have gone through the experimental phases of our lives having felt like we'd been lied to about marijuana, we handled ourselves using pot, and so we went on experimenting with other more dangerous substances. Some of those more dangerous substances have even been legal. My generation has stumbled through addictions like rites of passage. What my generation has learned will translate into leaps and bounds of progressive politics for our future generations. My generations' children are going to rebel against conventional education because we are going to teach our children that they have to seek out the truth for themselves. You can't be alive today and not know that if you watch mainstream teevee you're being brainwashed. Even my son at 4 years old knew that commercials were made to make you want to buy things. He understood at a young age that everything he sees on teevee tries to make him feel a certain way. He would tell me that a certain commercial would make him feel like he wanted something instead of just saying to me that he wanted that something. I can imagine many mothers and fathers of my generation explaining how the teevee permeates the brain to their children because otherwise our children would never stop demanding that they want the crap they see on teevee.

All the signs of change are here. Awareness will take it's toll on outdated laws.