Cent ans de plus [English translation]

One hundred years in the skin of a slave

And a hundred years more

Searching for crumbs under the tables

Before the whites tread on them

Sleeping on bundles of planks

Only singing on Sunday

You see the black woman

In the role of a maid

Standing by her side

Her bent and broken man

After that you mustn’t be surprised

It’s them who made

Them who made

Son House and Charley Patton

Howlin’ Wolf and Blind Lemon

So red the African blood

On the pretty cotton flower

The all new America

The beautiful democracy “Welcome”

Boats deporting the villages

At the end of the immense voyage

Carved in the memory

For light years

Every drop of ivory

Every iron necklace

After that you mustn’t be surprised

It’s them who made

Them who made

Son House and Charley Patton

Howlin’ Wolf and Blind Lemon

Always pleasing the shadowy merchants

She who is bought and him who is given

Born under a life sentence

Always living within what we are

A people forbidden from joining the rest of humanity

Searching for the blue of the ancient kingdom

Them who made, it mustn’t surprise you

Son House and Charley Patton

Blind Blake and Willie Dixon

Ma Rainey and Robert Johnson

Howlin’ Wolf and Blind Lemon

Son House and Charley Patton