This emotional rendition of the Newberry Award-winning novel "The Slave Dancer" by Paula Fox is a crowning achievement for The Bonus Point Band. Get carried away as the music takes you through the story from beginning to end. Sit with Jessie on the docks of New Orleans and ride with him on the slave ship until you make your way back home.

Words and Music by Ash Kizer
© 2004

In 1840 when I was 13
I would play for the men by the docks.
It was just Mother and Sister and me
Since the untimely death of my pop.

That was life in old New Orleans
Sitting and playing my fife,
But if only I could have known
That something would soon change my life.

One night I was kidnapped
By two burly sailors.
They put me aboard a big ship.
They handled me rough
And said I had to play
For the slaves had to dance to stay fit.

And the slaves were so beaten down,
But I could find nothing to say,
And they danced, danced, danced for the day,
But I just wanted to get away.

Chorus:
Oh, the tragedy there;
The flags and the guns in the air,
Well, it all comes down
To the point of equality.
Well, it all comes down to one point
That we found aboard the ship.

Then when we only had three weeks to go
Well, the weather began to get bad.
How long it was storming, I will never know,
But it was the worst time that I've had.

And we swam, swam, swam for the shore,
Me and a black boy named Ross,
And we felt what freedom was for
Even though we had suffered a loss.

Somehow we found ourselves safely on land
With an old man who called himself Dan.
Those were the days as we ran through the sand,
Till the boy in me turned into man.

And we all went our separate ways;
I thought that I'd never reach home.
But I finally made it one day
Though I'd changed more than they'd ever know.

(Chorus)


"The Slave Dancer" by Ash Kizer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.