The truth about the song Diallo is still a mystery to some people after all these years. Regular song listeners don’t mind listening to a songs underlying message. As long it you can dance to it, then there’s no problem. “Diallo”: written and recorded by Haitian rapper Wyclef Jean in his album titled 2 sides II a book. In this song, Jean narrates how an unarmed young guinea immigrant with no previous infractions was shot and killed by American police men.
Amadou Diallo, 24 was a Guinean immigrant who met his untimely demise on February 4th 1999 at the hands of four new-york police who claim that they mistook him for a rape suspect on the run. Diallo reached into his jacket with the intention of taking out his wallet. The sight of an unknown man with an unidentified object in his possesion was what triggered one of the officers causing him to yell “Gun!” to alert the other officers. The policemen opened fire on Diallo, repeatedly firing rounds after rounds at him. They claimed that they believed he was holding a gun. They fired a total of 41 shots of which 19 of them ended up hitting him.‘’ After that, they went on to search his apartment and asked his neighbours if he had any enemies. Desperately looking for something to pin on him, but they couldn’t find anything. Amadou Diallo was just a regular Muslim who was working on the streets trying to save money for the university.
The culprits were Kenneth Boss, Sean Caroll, Edward Mcmellon and Richard Murphy. These police men opened fire on an unarmed Amadou right in front of his house. The police officers have since been charged with second degree murder and reckless endangerment. Their defence stated that even though they were in plain clothes, they yelled out to Amadou to identify himself but he didn’t. However, this was debunked when an eye witness who said that the police officers made no attempt or whatsoever to identify themselves, instead, they just opened fire of Amadou.
All police offers were found to be “not guilty” and acquired of all charges.
To many people, the song was and is still just another catchy reggae tune you could bump our head and tap our feet to. However, when you really pay attention to the lyrics, you will find out its more than that. It served as an “elegy” to a fallen comrade, Wyclef jean through his song told the story which main stream media may not report. Due to this, Amadou Diallo remains forever immortalized, in our stereo sets and our hearts.
I am sure these lines from the song make more sense now after knowing the back story of the song.
“You said he reached sir
but he didn’t have no piece sir
But now he rest in peace sir
in the belly of the beast sir” – Wyclef Jean(2000).
1 Comment
That was such a tragedy. His loss will foreve be a tragedy to his family. Interesting writing. Did realize re the lyrics. Well written. You have an interest in astrology ? Circle has astrology with the characters.
Cheers, From your Taurus friend