Fubont ya Watu Weusi Wazuri (Kiswahili: Fubont of the Beautiful Black People), Part 1
Fubont was a rapper who claimed to be a human from another world, like Mike Valentine from Mars in the 1961 novel by Robert A. Heinlein. He said he was an English language learner and told his listeners that he did not speak English when he learned to talk. It is unclear if he ever became proficient in the English language, but his idiosyncratic use of the language and the background music he composed that accompanied his words gained some attention from a few well-known music critics of the day.
Fubont was actually another alter-ego created by Gibberish Maximus, whose birth name was Alexandre Guillén. As Fubont, he recorded Scannaramma at home while sitting in front of his computer. Fubont never performed in public, but he made videos to go along with his works. Even so, Scannaramma got reviewed by a well-known music critic by accident. The critic overheard the piece when he walked past his daughter’s bedroom one morning. He found himself intrigued by the mixture of music styles he heard and the absurdist lyrics that seemed to be centered around an unsuccessful extraterrestrial invasion of Earth, an unsuccessful group of criminals who were killed in a nightclub, a discussion about the sanctity of life, and how Fubont perceives and reveres the human soul. And it ends with a prayer. Pretty crazy stuff, right?
Scannaramma
Yo yo yip
And sixteen bananas
Racin’ all them cars
In green Alabama
Round and round
The track in Tallabamma
This ain’t poetry
I call it scannarama:
Be comin,’ To invade the Erf
Frum planet Yooruh-nova
Bustin’ in no dolla sense
Got popped; invasion over!
Erf people, get with the flow
In the dancing room, all in the flow;
Bad people comin tall thru the dough
Dem dem got dead, now dey ainomo.
Den dey holy got gone.
Dem dey love got gone.
Now dem life got gone.
But we all need now to tell dem truth
Cause the life matter before the shoot
Go go now an live life true
I’m the player of
I’m the child of
I’m the stone of
And be cryin out
‘Cause I see the holy
And the holy in you.
A-men, A-woman too.
A-you, A-me, A-everybody
Time to be true.
Peace
Fubont ya Watu Weusi Wazuri, Part 2
Fubont claims he met the singer and bandleader James Brown in a Modesto supermarket in 2006. Mr. Brown, also known as “the hardest working man in show business,” “soul-brother number one,” and “the godfather of soul,” passed through town on his way to what was to be his final performance in San Francisco. Fubont says he was so excited to see Mr. Brown in person that all he could say was the opening of Brown’s song Make it Funky. He said, “What ‘chu gon’ do now, God-father?” He said James Brown started laughing and responded with, “Little brother, I don’t know, but whatsunever it is, it’s got to be funky! Yeah!”
Fubont said this encounter with soul-brother number one partially inspired the song As Surreal as He Wants to Be.Several books he owned also contributed: The Bible, an art book about Dada and Surrealism, both art movements from the earlier part of the 20th Century, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality by Cheikh Anta Diop, translated and edited by Mercer Cook, and a book filled with photographs of different galaxies.
As Surreal as He Wants to Be
As surreal as we want to be
As surreal as I wanna be.
I saw a ba bird in a tree
It had wings and it looks like me.
I’m from the KMT also called Khemet
Osiris (Asr) in my blood, and I can’t forget it.
Anu, Kush, and Nubia too.
Past all the borders but I can’t be you.
Beyond the desert
Beyond the sea
I’ll be as surreal
As I want to be
Beyond the age
Beyond this time
I keep my soul
And my soul be mine.
Bless the universe, oh my soul
I look to cosmos and wanna be whole.
Living in a dream
In multiple dimensions
Knowing all this
Removes the apprehension.
Bless the universe, oh my soul
I look to cosmos and I wanna be whole.