1 Beside the rivers of Babylon, we sat and wept as we thought of Jerusalem.
2 We put away our lyres, hanging them on the branches of the willow trees.
3 For there our captors demanded a song of us.
Our tormentors requested a joyful hymn:
"Sing us one of those songs of Jerusalem!"
4 But how can we sing the songs of the LORD while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill upon the harp.
6 May my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth
if I fail to remember you,
if I don't make Jerusalem my highest joy.
Psalm 137
I hear this old Jamaican group singing this song. It's on one of my parents records. 45s!...I think. It wasn't Marley, though..was it? I dunno.
ReplyDeleteDope song.
But has anyone ever wondered...*what* a lyre is/looks like?
I'd like to know. And do people still get down on the lyres? Like can lyres be in a rock band? I think that'd be the hypefreshness.
it's a psalm. a very, very sad, lamentatious psalm. it ends with a promise of happiness to anyone who can bash brains out of their enemies' babies.
ReplyDeleteyeah, sad.
of course, the first time i ran across it was in a song, too. one by Adam Again, my favorite group.
never heard the other version.
So it's not just a reggae song!
ReplyDeleteI have two versions:
1) Sublime on 40 oz. to Freedom (this may have been pulled - like a couple of other tracks - off later pressings)
2) The Melodians on Jimmy Cliff's The Harder They Come soundtrack (grab the Deluxe Edition - it has an excellent second disc of roots reggae)