With an alarming backdrop, “Two Thousand Seasons” quotes a text to ask us to consider what text can do.

Track: “Two Thousand Seasons”
Album: Yam, the King of Crops (1994) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

Two Thousand Seasons is a novel by Ayi Kwei Armah. “Two Thousand Seasons” is also a song by the Mountain Goats. The lyrics, with the minor exception of a repetition of the first line twice at the end, are the first half of the prologue to the novel.

I have not read Two Thousand Seasons, and I’ll admit that prior to writing this I had not given much thought to this song. For all of the creeping dread that exists behind so many Mountain Goats songs, few can be said to be “eerie,” but this one certainly is. The original text does much of that lifting, but you cannot discount John Darnielle’s additions. The rolling boombox evokes many things over the early songs, but this may be the best use to create a mood.

The title refers to two thousand years of African history and the impact of colonialism and enslavement on the continent. It is impossibly large to consider as a subject within a song, but it’s made even larger by the gravity of “two thousand seasons” as an idea. A season is already a long time to all of us, certainly, and the original text asks us to consider that as a tiny piece of a larger story.

Yam, the King of Crops is full of direct references to African literature, but none more direct than a song that is an extended quote. It’s beyond the scope of my abilities as a writer to break down what this prologue means, but it’s fascinating that John Darnielle uses this specific language about storytelling (and the challenges and limitations of it, to a degree) as an entire song. If it does nothing more than cause you to consider the text, it has succeeded as a song.