Brian Jackson and I have been writing music and performing together since 1969. From January of 1970 when we started traveling as the nucleus of a group call “Black & Blues” til now, mid '77, responses from communities both far and near, have given us an opportunity to take our art to the streets and stages and share it with people we might otherwise never have encountered. Somehow, in even the most distant setting, the warmth and sincerity of the brothers and sisters we have come in contact with, has made us feel at home. Music has been our common denominator; our vehicle; the mutual vibration that gives us a focus, but the ideas and spirit behind the music has been the adhesive and inspiration for continued attempts to communicate.

There is a revolution going on in the world. We are very much a part of it and have a great deal to contribute to the force and direction of this revolution. There are many fronts within this struggle, many far flung outposts geographically isolated and distant from our mainstreams of communication. But everyone who struggles for a better life for oppressed people is an ally who could use any symbol of our concern and solidarity. There is a growing guerilla movement in Southern Africa, a period of healing and rebuilding in Southeast Asia, a movement towards economic independence in the Carribean and we are a part of it all. In our own lives the struggle to educate continues: to bring the need for positive change into focus; to bring about a new understanding of the dynamics of change.

All things change. From the wheel to the automobile. From you, diapers, stuffed animals and bronzed baby shoes, to you in high school, in love, in debt. And the social dynamics and perimeters during your lifetime have exploded into a thousand fragments of liberation movements and human rights demands. It has been a revolution that ignited in the eyes of Asian peasant and African Bushmen and Afro-American Corner Kings who began to direct this inevitable change. It is a revolution in full stride that has changed, irrevocably, our understanding of ourselves in this society as it has demythologized so many of the imoressions of black/white, wrong/right that imprisoned us all.

We still believe, as did El Hajj Malik Shabazz (Malcolm X) among others, that America has the potential to undergo a bloodless revolution, in that change may come without pitched battles in the street. But there has already been bloodshed and stains are fresh. It is winter and we are regaining our strength. The key to our progress lies within our ability to support alliances between ourselves and Third World people. The support begins here. In solidarity with chicanos, Puerto Riquenos, Oriental American and Native Americans we will continue to focus on the need for justice and opportunity. We have debts to pays. In the interest of comrades who have contributed their lives, as well as in our own interest.