Ebony and Ivy by Esperanza Spalding
Ebony and Ivy by Esperanza Spalding

Ebony and Ivy

Esperanza Spalding * Track #7 On Emily’s D+Evolution

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Ebony and Ivy by Esperanza Spalding

Release Date
Fri Mar 04 2016
Performed by
Esperanza Spalding
About

In this song Spalding calls out the harms of cultural elitism in the US university system (typified by the ‘good old-fashioned learning’ of so-called Ivy league colleges).

Between the machine-gun spoken word theses that bookend the song, Spalding speaks to the difficulties of people of color seekin...

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Ebony and Ivy Lyrics

[Intro]
Ochre, ivy, brick, and leather bound books built up by heavy lock crooks with unburdened minds of bastardized Darwinian logic projected as hard evidence on backs and faces of our ancestral culprits wasted, toiling as a majority of plantated crimes

We wanna knock [?] and climb [?] strings of wisdom and build our own hot breath kingdoms and make humane passions rain down ash then hand out dirty white rules to wipe up and memorize then howl our own law hand-me-downs upon the class of masses and grin as each graduate passes on our synthesized words that sterilize natural awe

[Verse 1]
Sage grows on the mountain
You can dig it with a silver spoon
Float it off to market
Hawk and talk it from hot-air balloons
Get your good old-fashioned learning

Hear the bell in summers
Ending underneath the apple tree
Time to choose a branch
And build your nest of animosity
Now we're really, really learning

[Chorus]
It's been hard to grow outside
Growing good, and act happy
And pretend that the ivy vines
Didn't weigh our branch down

It's been hard to grow outside
But we're finally happy
Where the sage on the mountain now
Is a plant or animal

[Verse 2]
Sage grows on the mountain
'round the fountain of unfiltered truth
Someone's locked the well
You might contaminate their point-of-view
And the taste of high-class feelings

Peeking through the keyhole
Thirsty people watch the mastery
One degree of kneeling separates the heads from loving need
And the art of low-class feeling

[Chorus]
It's been hard to grow outside
Growing good, and act happy
And pretend that the ivy vines
Didn't weigh our branch down

It's been hard to grow outside
But we're finally happy
Where the sage on the mountain now
Is a plant or animal

[Bridge]
Finally. Ochre, ivy, brick, and leather-bound books to find and fill our minds with double-standard visions by degrees we master slaving over someone else's questions test their problems and abolish all unsavory and good grammar and forbid shovels, picking their hammers, and the act of starching linen to become the educated ones wrapped in them

[Chorus] (x3)
It's been hard to grow outside
Growing good, and act happy
And pretend that the ivy vines
Didn't weigh our branch down

It's been hard to grow outside
But we're finally happy
Where the sage on the mountain now
Is a plant or animal

Ebony and Ivy Q&A

When did Esperanza Spalding release Ebony and Ivy?

Esperanza Spalding released Ebony and Ivy on Fri Mar 04 2016.

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