Oh I just wanna go to work --
And get back home, and be something
I just wanna fall in line --
And do my time, and be something
Well I just wanna prove my worth --
On the planet Earth, and be, something
I just wanna fall in love
Not fuck it up, and feel something
Well lately, don’t understand what I am
Treated as a fool
Not quite a woman or a man
Well I don’t know
I guess I don’t understand the plan
Colonized, and hypnotized, be something
Sterilized, dehumanized, be something
Well take your pay
And stay out the way, be something
Ah do your best
But fuck the rest, be something
Well lately, it’s been mighty hard to see
Just searching for my lost humanity
I look for you, my friend
But do you look for me?
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Lately I’m not too afraid, to die
I wanna leave it all behind
I think about it sometimes
Lately all my time’s been movin slow
I don’t know where I’m gonna go
Just give me time, I’ll know
Oh, any day now
Oh, any day now
I will come along
Oh, any day now
Oh, any day now
I will come along
I will come along
Dead Puerto Ricans who never knew they were Puerto Ricans
Who never took a coffee break from the 10th commandment
To kill, kill, kill
The landlords of their cracked skulls
And communicate with their Latin souls
Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Olga, Manuel
From the nervous breakdown streets where the mice live like millionaires
And the people do not live at all [1]
From El barrio to Arecibo, ¡Pa’lante!
From Marble Hill to the ghost of Emmett Till, ¡Pa’lante!
To Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Manuel, ¡Pa’lante!
To all who came before, we say, ¡Pa’lante!
To my mother and my father, I say, ¡Pa’lante!
To Julia, and Sylvia, ¡Pa’lante!
To all who had to hide, I say, ¡Pa’lante!
To all who lost their pride, I say, ¡Pa’lante!
To all who had to survive, I say, ¡Pa’lante!
To my brothers, and my sisters, I say, ¡Pa’lante!
¡Pa’lante!
¡Pa’lante!
To all came before, we say, ¡Pa’lante!
And get back home, and be something
I just wanna fall in line --
And do my time, and be something
Well I just wanna prove my worth --
On the planet Earth, and be, something
I just wanna fall in love
Not fuck it up, and feel something
Well lately, don’t understand what I am
Treated as a fool
Not quite a woman or a man
Well I don’t know
I guess I don’t understand the plan
Colonized, and hypnotized, be something
Sterilized, dehumanized, be something
Well take your pay
And stay out the way, be something
Ah do your best
But fuck the rest, be something
Well lately, it’s been mighty hard to see
Just searching for my lost humanity
I look for you, my friend
But do you look for me?
See upcoming country shows
Get tickets for your favorite artists
Lately I’m not too afraid, to die
I wanna leave it all behind
I think about it sometimes
Lately all my time’s been movin slow
I don’t know where I’m gonna go
Just give me time, I’ll know
Oh, any day now
Oh, any day now
I will come along
Oh, any day now
Oh, any day now
I will come along
I will come along
Dead Puerto Ricans who never knew they were Puerto Ricans
Who never took a coffee break from the 10th commandment
To kill, kill, kill
The landlords of their cracked skulls
And communicate with their Latin souls
Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Olga, Manuel
From the nervous breakdown streets where the mice live like millionaires
And the people do not live at all [1]
From El barrio to Arecibo, ¡Pa’lante!
From Marble Hill to the ghost of Emmett Till, ¡Pa’lante!
To Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Manuel, ¡Pa’lante!
To all who came before, we say, ¡Pa’lante!
To my mother and my father, I say, ¡Pa’lante!
To Julia, and Sylvia, ¡Pa’lante!
To all who had to hide, I say, ¡Pa’lante!
To all who lost their pride, I say, ¡Pa’lante!
To all who had to survive, I say, ¡Pa’lante!
To my brothers, and my sisters, I say, ¡Pa’lante!
¡Pa’lante!
¡Pa’lante!
To all came before, we say, ¡Pa’lante!
[1] from Pedro Pietri’s poem ‘Puerto Rican Obituary’
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Album: The Navigator
Hurray For The Riff Raff frontwoman Alynda Segarra spent much of her youth hopping trains in search of America. The band’s sixth album, The Navigator, follows the story of a similar young girl, Navita, as she does the same. ‘Be something!’ goes the rallying cry of the American by-your-bootstraps dream, of ‘Pa'lante,’ Segarra’s ode to the working class Puerto Rican community she grew up with in the Bronx. ‘Colonized and hypnotized / Be something,’ she sings in her piercing, wavering alto over a slightly out-of-tune piano — ‘Sterilized, dehumanized / Be something.’
After an interlude drawn from Pedro Pietri’s poem ‘Puerto Rican Obituary,’ first read in 1969, the same year the Young Lords of New York City adopted ‘pa'lante’ as their motto, Segarra’s ‘be something’ resolves into that familiar phrase pointing forward. She urges pa'lante the same ‘millions of dead Puerto Ricans’ that Pietri did: Juan, Miguel, Milagros and Manuel. Segarra adds to that list Julia de Burgos and Sylvia Rivera, and now, the estimated 4,645 dead after 2017’s Hurricane Maria, whose homes continue to collapse in their absence and whose ghosts inhabit the music video in New York and on the island like silent flags. A call to keep moving with unwavering memory because we must, ‘Pa'lante’ is Hurray For the Riff Raff’s strongest anthem of resistance to date.
NPR