Coco Peila – Speaking to the Heart of the Matter
WOMEN RISING RADIO is proud to feature the work of Coco Peila on our Gallery page. Coco is an emcee-singer-songwriter who hails from Berkeley California in the United States. Her music has been featured online withM the International Museum of Women, on Global Lingo, Change The Nation and various other compilations. Coco has performed at manyvenues including the San Francisco Opera House, The Beehive, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Teatro Nacional de Guatemala, New Zealand’s Hope Brothers, and more. She is currently working on her debut album. Download her music free at: COCOPEILA.BANDPAGE.COM
What amazes WOMEN RISING RADIO about Coco’s song/poem GOVERNMENT CLASS TANGENT is how passionately she evokes for us the experience of being feminine in the world, and particularly in the United States. And particularly for girls and women of color. Race has been a core heartland issue in the United States since the first immigrants landed on the continent hundreds of years ago. Coco brings it all back home from the perspective of the psyche and soul of a young woman.
Coco’s full Bio:
Coco Peila is a Emcee-Singer-Songwriter-Poet-Educator from Berkeley CA. In 2007 Oakland’s Youth Movement Records and San Francisco’s Youth Noise chose her song Any Day Now, to commission a music video for Youth Noise’s “Healthy Body Image” campaign. Any Day Now went on to be selected to be a part of the International Museum Of Women and receive over 30K hits on Youtube. She competed in Youth Speak’s National Youth Poetry slams throughout her teens, and became a National Slam champion in 2005 while representing the East Bay team in Youth Speak’s international youth poetry festival Brave New Voices. Coco Peila received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Recording Arts and her Master of Science Degree in Entertainment Business from Full Sail University in Orlando Florida. During her time at Full Sail she was responsible for the creation,curation, and production of The RealNeRds Mixtape Project; a two part series comprised of mixtapes and mixtape release parties featuring indie artists from across the U.S. and New Zealand. She has performed nationally and internationally at venues such as: The San Francisco Opera House, The Beehive, Yerba Buena Center For The Arts, Teatro Nacional de Guatemala, New Zealand’s Hope Brother’s, and more. She released her first solo mixtape in February 2011 called “Can I Reminisce…Progress Not Perfection”. Her next untitled project is set to be released in 2013.
Listen to Government Class Tangent by Coco Peila
Lyrics: Government Class Tangent – © Coco Peila
My Government teacher told us to write about Democracy
Democracy?
Please.
This is my story
Listen to it
Tell me if it sounds like I live in a Democracy
Tell me this
17 years old
Probably know more than some people have ever been told
but I’m told that, my voice doesn’t count
I am:
Young
Black
Female
Won’t say Woman
Even though many are trying to convince me I am one
And I wonder:
Why do they sexualize me on TV?
Tell me I am Woman, am “sexy”
Should be having sex, am Woman, am ready
Almost 18 seems to be old enough for anything
in This Country
Many – tell me I am Woman
and yet Law won’t let me vote
Many – tell me I am Woman
Many make it all available to me
Sex
Alcohol
Weed
Explain to me why:
21 is the age I can legally drink
but why
alcohol is more readily available to me at 17
Than the right to vote
Tell me…
Grew up:
Poor
Black
Got used to spreading my lip gloss so thick
The light reflecting off my lips
Would distract
Men from my hips
Would distract
Me from my insecurities
All My Girls knew that shit
Sure as hell didn’t moisturize our lips
At the end of the day left them:
Cracked
Bleeding
Just like the neighborhoods we’d go home to
But each morning, we’d spread it back – on
Hoping it would make us look a little more like those girls on TV
The same TV that kept telling us we were Women
We were:
Terrified 12 year olds
walking through middle school hallways
switching our hips
like we “had it going on”
licking out lips
like we were “sexy”pressing our hair in order to make our faces look European
imprisoned
Only thing we “had going on” was that:
Internalized:
Sexism
Racism
Yea I said it…
Used the R word
Used some isms
And I don’t give a fuck
If this is another race poem
Cause there should be at least 1 race poem
For every Black Boy I know
Whose been made to believe He was stupid
For every Black Girl I know
Whose been sexually abused and
By the way
I don’t know 1 Black Girl whose been
Left untouched
This is to say
I don’t know 1 Black Girl who hasn’t been
Sexually abused
Since most Black Men have been
Sexually abused themselves, it makes sense and
Knowing all this, I still can’t vote
Yes, I know “No vote is going to save” me, save my community
Still I gotta ask you
A few – Questions
Explain it to – me
Is there such thing as a Democracy?
Is it possible, that maybe people made it up
To convince them selves this world was less fucked up, than it is
Or is it just another way to control “the masses”?
Or maybe no one cares about “ the masses”
Maybe shit just fell randomly this way
and separated
the classes
Maybe Class is – only coincidence
You tell me
I mean
This is my story
But I don’t understand it yet
Cause if it’s my story
How’s it His-story too
And him and I ain’t never met
I mean
This is my story
But I don’t know enough History to back it
These days
You gotta have a Works Cited Page
Just to convince people your life actually happened
Maybe this has nothing to do with Democracy
I guess this is just another Government Class tangent
But these
Are the first thoughts
That came up when he asked me
To write about it
Democracy that is,
Please…
