Our narrator dreams of better times that aren’t coming back in “Chinese Rifle Song.”

Track: “Chinese Rifle Song”
Album: Yam, the King of Crops (1994) and Protein Source of the Future…Now! (1999)

Immediately after “Two Thousand Seasons,” a song that is an exact transcription of the prologue of a novel, comes “Chinese Rifle Song” on the 1994 release Yam, the King of Crops. The adjustment is severe. The former song is haunting and speaks of genocide and slavery. The latter is one character talking about laying on a patio. Why does this shift so abruptly?

There is no public commentary on “Chinese Rifle Song.” It’s one of the few songs that most of the usual resources are completely silent about. There are no live performances recorded that I can find. It exists solely as this version that was released in 1994 and re-released in 1999.

It feels like a song in conversation with “Omega Blaster” from the same release. The references on Yam, the King of Crops are to African literature, but the theme is heartbreak. The characters throughout the album process the end of things together and tell us what the experience is like. In “Omega Blaster” our narrator has decided to leave and they tell us what that feels like to them. By the time “Chinese Rifle Song” comes along, sure, they hear a Chinese rifle, but they also have a serene moment broken by life outside.

We don’t get enough in this song to know if that is the case. It really doesn’t matter. “Chinese Rifle Song” is, on the surface, a song about someone laying on a patio and hearing rifles go off. If that’s where you want to leave it, you wouldn’t be the only one. As for me, what I choose to hear in the narrator’s hopeful “dreaming” and sharp delivery of “sounding in the air” is the final moments of hoping before they can’t anymore.