I'm Black / Colored Spade

Album: Hair Soundtrack (1967)
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Songfacts®:

  • Like the rest of the songs in Hair, "I'm Black/Colored Spade" has lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni, music by Galt MacDermot. Performed by Berger, Claude, Hud, Woof, and the Tribe, it is a list of epithets and euphemisms for alluding to African-Americans, which like the word used at the time, negro, does not appear on the list. Along with "Sodomy," it is one of the more controversial songs in the production. >>
    Suggestion credit:
    Alexander Baron - London, England

Comments: 2

  • Doug L Warner from MaineThe term negro IS mentioned. It's the 6th word in the song "I'm a colored spade
    A negro, a black ni--er" The "O" sound is not a hard as in toe. but like the "O" in women
  • Art Davis from United StatesThe original Hair production acknowledges the reality that, in response to the civil rights movement and societal improvements for blacks, racism only mutated to different styles and methods of racism. The racism continued in full force, of which the multitude of dehumanizing words used to describe blacks was just one of the tools mainstream America used to perpetuate racial stereotypes and justify oppression. This song highlights that reality.
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