I saw this on Facebook a few weeks ago and I saved it to my phone, because right now it resonates particularly well with my life...
Black Pearl
Black pearl, precious little girl
Let me put you up where you belong
Black pearl, pretty little girl
You've been in the background much too long
I was listening to this song whilst dancing round the shop this morning *cough* I mean packing orders... And I was overcome by a wave of sadness. This song for me is one that conjures images of childhood and my mam singing it whilst dancing around a front room, bare foot. Songs from the Trojan Records label in general whisk me back to being a child and dancing until the early hours of the morning to Reggae track after Reggae track, interspersed with Motown of the 60s.
These are songs I grew up with (if you haven't read my previous blogpost on my family, you can find it here: Standing Up and Speaking Out) and they always fill me with nostalgia. But listening to the lyrics this morning, I was filled with sadness. Listening in 2020, to a song written in 1969, I was struck with how nothing has changed. Here we are in 2020, still fighting the same fight.