Dust and Bass

Before the city Before the wire Before the machine learned to breathe There was a drum And the drum Was everything Bare feet read the red dirt like a scripture Elders drew the stars before they had a picture Talking drum carried news across a thousand miles of trees Before your satellite ever learned to speak to me Roots run deeper than your concrete ever poured Every modern rhythm borrowed from a forgotten chord We fed the soil with ceremony, salt, and sweat Built a world so whole your history hasn’t found it yet Feel it in the ground (Feel it) Feel it in the bone (Feel it) Every drum we ever made Was calling you back home Dust and bass Dust and bass Ancient face Modern place Dust and bass Dust and bass We never left Just changed the space Griots wrapped whole empires in a song Your museums took the artifacts but couldn’t take what made them strong Timbuktu stacked libraries while Europe chased the plague We mapped the constellations on a drum and called it sacred Now the bass still shakes the same way that the earth did When ten thousand feet moved together undisturbed You compress the ceremony into four on the floor But the spirit in the rhythm still remembers what it’s for Dust and bass Dust and bass Ancient face Modern place Dust and bass Dust and bass We never left Just changed the space We are the first sound We are the deep ground Every beat you ever felt Came up through us From the dust (from the dust) Before Before Before Before the drop there was the drum Before the drum there was the hum Before the hum there was the earth And the earth Has never Stopped Moving YEAH! Dust and bass Dust and bass Ancient face Modern place Dust and bass Dust and bass We never left Just changed the space Dust and bass Dust and bass Ancient face We never left We never left We never left Just changed the space Before the city Before the wire There was a drum