Actually Speech is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The song is about "Tennessee" because when his grandmother and his only brother died (within a week of each other) he started thinking about why his family suffered two tragedies so close together and he realized what kind of a mess African Americans are in... and when he took his troubles to God, he saw where his people came from, and where they are, and how far was left to go.
He uses "Tennessee" because it's a southern state... much of the imagery in the song is based on slavery and the way black people were treated during colonial days... he speaks of Tennessee both as a rural area full of nature (which Arrested Development loves -- nature) and also a place where so many of his people have suffered and died ("climb the trees my forefathers hung from,") and so the movement of his people out of the rural South into the ghettos of the urban North is not, he decides, much of a step up in the world. And he thinks the problem now is that they're too far from Nature... that nature holds the answers to peace and happiness. So on the one hand. the South was a place of suffering but it is also a place of wonders that he feels his people need to embrace...
"Now I see the importance of history / why my people be in the mess that we be / many journeys to freedom made in vain / my brothers on the corner playing ghetto games..."
Actually Speech is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The song is about "Tennessee" because when his grandmother and his only brother died (within a week of each other) he started thinking about why his family suffered two tragedies so close together and he realized what kind of a mess African Americans are in... and when he took his troubles to God, he saw where his people came from, and where they are, and how far was left to go.
He uses "Tennessee" because it's a southern state... much of the imagery in the song is based on slavery and the way black people were treated during colonial days... he speaks of Tennessee both as a rural area full of nature (which Arrested Development loves -- nature) and also a place where so many of his people have suffered and died ("climb the trees my forefathers hung from,") and so the movement of his people out of the rural South into the ghettos of the urban North is not, he decides, much of a step up in the world. And he thinks the problem now is that they're too far from Nature... that nature holds the answers to peace and happiness. So on the one hand. the South was a place of suffering but it is also a place of wonders that he feels his people need to embrace...
"Now I see the importance of history / why my people be in the mess that we be / many journeys to freedom made in vain / my brothers on the corner playing ghetto games..."
@Keyser Sushi
@Keyser Sushi