If We Must Die

by Robin Lane

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about

I wrote this song to a poem by Claude McKay, a Jamaican American writer and poet who was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. This poem is devastating and having come from Jews who lost their lives in the Holocaust I broke down upon reading it and was compelled to sing the pain and injustice written. I will never know what it is like to be a black man chased by mad and hungry dogs but I do know what evil is and how it exists in the world, and in this country even now.

lyrics

IF WE MUST DIE by Claude McKay, song by Robin Lane

If we must die—let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot.
If we must die—oh, let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;
Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

credits

released June 15, 2023
Robin Lane

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about

The Robin Lane Boston, Massachusetts

Once acclaimed by The Washington Post as “the most talented female artist to come out of New Wave Rock,” Robin Lane brings a fascinating, multi-genre history to her emergence as a contemporary force in Americana music with the release of Dirt Road to Heaven. Perhaps best known for her early 80s band Robin Lane and The Chartbusters ... more

therobinlane.com

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