You taught me how to hit it,
That beat that cuts the solid four
And gives the tune a catch fiddlers can play to.
You taught me how to play
That upward, backward strum against the grain.

Playing on the beat is safe -
The machine beat, safe rock n’ roll (2-3-4)
“Here we are and here we are and here we go”.

Scott Joplin playing ragtime off the beat
entranced the ears and then the feet
of the musical elite.
And though he died in poverty
while white men gained celebrity
his syncopation was still an invitation to emancipation.
“c’mon and hear, c’mon and hear,
Alexander’s Ragtime Band”.

Playing off the beat makes you want to dance...


It’s the off beat beat that makes the beat
that makes you want to tap your feet, that makes the heat.

Martin Luther King suggested
all progress depends on the maladjusted.
If you’re happy with the way of it
you’ve got no reason to shout.
It’s the maladjusted who’ve got the frustration
and the motivation to make the change.
It’s the maladjusted will sort this sad world out.

So don’t be afraid to step out of line,
and be a lone voice, be out of time,
saying the true thing orthodoxy needs to put it right
and make it rhyme.

The beat needs the offbeat
like the sour needs the sweet, or the cold the heat

We should welcome the offbeat
we should welcome the strange, and the danger it brings
and the way it rearranges things.

We should welcome the wilderness and the way it sings in us,
and the wild and brilliant things it brings to us.

Because in a world whose feet are dancing to the beat
of a corporate elite,

We are the off-beat.