By Elaine Magliaro

Joseph Lamour (Upworthy) posted an article last week about Sade, the four-time Grammy Award winner and British-Nigerian singer, and her song “Pearls”. He said “Pearls” had become one of her most enduring hits.

Lamour wrote: “But did you know this song is about a woman and child living in the 1992 Somali famine?” He added, “That fact flies by some because one doesn’t really need to listen to the words Sade sings to get the effect of her music.”

Sade – Pearls (Live)

Excerpt from PEARLS:

There is a woman in Somalia
Scraping for pearls on the roadside
There’s a force stronger than nature
Keeps her will alive
That’s how she’s dying
She’s dying to survive
Don’t know what she’s made of
I would like to be that brave
She cries to the heaven above
There is a stone in my heart
She lives a life she didn’t choose
And it hurts like brand-new shoes

Click here to read the rest of the song’s lyrics.

Lamour said that the main character in Sade’s song is picking “pearls” off the side of the road. Those “pearls” are actually “grains of rice that have fallen off relief trucks passing by her.” He said that the grains of rice “are as precious as pearls because in her life, they are just as rare.”

SOURCE

Listen to a Grammy Award winner’s song about world hunger. It’s simply stunning. (Upworthy)