They Used to Sing to Me

"Ron, and others who study the issues of mixed race
Say we need to understand identity is a product of your surroundings"
"Communities are gonna want to gravitate towards figures
Who they think repesent them or reflect them,
And they really,
They really want the figure to claim the community
As a way of (affirming the status)"
"But why is it that we have this fascination
With labeling those of mixed race
As one way or another?"
"No I do not think that's right,
People seem to be under the misimpression that everyone gets one label
And this label is for life"
"I certainly have felt burdened
By other people's expectations of me, (Sana sana colita de rana)
You know, (Si no sana hoy sanará mañana)
Uhm, that's true, and that's a very common,
That's a very common phenomenon (Sana sana colita de rana)
or experience that mixed race people report"

Pretending all the time, I pretend to speak well German
I fake accents, I'm code-switching every time,
Constantly I pretend there's a fully grown German in me
And as well, at the same time I pretend and try to be fully
Ecuadorian, but I can't
No matter where I go I'll always be the outsider
Who has to pretend to fit in
Since my father was basically
livin' a whole other city
Mostly my mom raised me
In the end,
And she was raised by
an Ecuadorian-Italian woman,
My grandma, my Oma,
Who was raised by other nations as well
She was partly raised by Swiss in California
Plus her Italian father and her Ecuadorian mama
So my mom, my Oma and my Opa raised me in a mixed fashion
Traditions of all sorts and languages that ranged from Italian,
Spanish, German, sprinkled with some Anglo-Saxon
That's where I come from,
I was raised to never fit in full
I was raised to be so many mes
And no one at all

"We might, uhm, you know, draw on the multiple languages that we speak
Or the different culinary traditions that we, uhm"
And they used to sing to me

La le lu
Nur der Mann im Mond schaut zu
Wenn die kleinen Babies schlafen (Sana sana colita de rana)
(Si no sana hoy, sanará mañana)
Drum schlaf auch du (Sana sana colita de rana)
(Si no sana hoy, sanará mañana)

And they used to sing to me
Hoppe hoppe Reiter
Wenn er fällt dann schreit er
Hoppe hoppe Reiter
Wenn er fällt dann schreit er
Fällt er in das grüne Grass,
Macht er sich die Hosen nass
Fällt er in den Graben,
Fressen ihn die Raben
Fällt er in die Hecken,
Fressen ihn die Schnecken
Fressen ihn die Müllermücken,
Die ihn vorn und hinten zwicken
Fällt er in den Sumpf
Macht der Reiter plumps
(Sana sana colita de rana)

La le lu
Nur der Mann im Mond schaut zu
Wenn die kleinen Babies schlafen (Sana sana colita de rana)
(Si no sana hoy, sanará mañana)
Drum schlaf auch du (Sana sana colita de rana)
(Si no sana hoy, sanará mañana)

In your eyes I was raised to be no one at all
But let me tell you something y'all
My country of origin
Is the family I came from
We're all just humans in this big blue world
That's all you need to know