DUBMARINE by K.I.A.
SONG STORY
“Dubmarine” is 2 haikus performed by Prince I (who is Rastafarian) over an hypnotic / ambient track. Music as an audio drug.
"Dubmarine" is an ambient instrumental that opens up lyrically only for the middle bit of the song. Each of the 2 stanzas has a 5/7/5 syllable structure, and a concrete image in the third line that brings together the meaning of the previous two lines. The ‘reggae haiku’ structure allows brevity, breath and beauty - it's the antithesis of both a blog and a tweet. The vocals float away in the ambient waves of the music.
Songs that really are poems with music function in a different way than songs that are, well, songs... if they are good, there's an element of revelation, and re-evaluation. As you're listening to the lyrics, you are wondering what is going on, and then the very last line opens up the whole story and gives the previous lines so much more meaning. The hook is the lyrical meaning and the emotion, not the vocal or beat... and to hear it again you have to replay the whole song, because it doesn't repeat because it doesn't have a verse/chorus structure. In a way, this is how I see the graphical version of the lyrics (NFTs) — as micropoems that you want to replay, as gifs that reveal over different frames (but still allow the viewer to imaginatively participate because they are words not jpegs or video).
The song’s inspiration: I’ve always been a fan of e.e. cummings, because his poetry is so song-like; you can hear the music in this quote from his poem "somewhere i have never traveled": (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; / only something in me understands / the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) / nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.
Generally, I'm not a big fan of spoken-word performance. However: Laurie Anderson. Especially her song "John Lilly", where she manages to compress more meaning and emotion than there is in many a full-length novel. Here's the lyrics: John Lilly, the guy who says he can talk to dolphins / said he was in an aquarium and he was talking to a big whale/ who was swimming around and around in his tank /And the whale kept asking him questions telepahtically / And one of the questions the whale kept asking was: / Do all oceans have walls?
Music/visual, and lyric/t NFT Here
ON ALBUMS:
- DXLR8
- Sonorous Susurrus
CREDITS:
Lyrics: Kirby Ian Andersen
Music: Kirby Ian Andersen
Vocals: Prince I
Performed by: K.I.A.
HEAR IT ON:
Apple
Spotify
Amazon
Tidal
LYRICS:
Carry us along
Take us down so we drown in
An ocean of song
Nothing disturbs us
Adrift with grace, breathing bass
Under dub’s surface
NFT: blue lines using ‘repeater”, text also blue, repeater lines move vibrate to rhtym, see the audio thing.