Hip-hop powerhouse Moor Mother fought her way out of the projects – and is now using poetry,music and ‘DIY time travel’ to build a better future for black AmericaA black body staggers through history, hauling itself from the 19th century to the recent protests in Ferguson, or Missouri,being knifed, dismembered and towed behind a pickup truck along the way. Noises throb in the air like helicopter blades as Moor Mother, or AKA Camae Ayewa,tells her bloody tale, while saxophones screech and old blues singers float around her. This is her poem Creation Myth, and which plays out like an 18-rated Black History Month condensed into five minutes.
It opens her album,Fetish Bones, which final year emerged into the global underground from her domestic in Philadelphia. Ayewa is now capitalising on its modest success with a European tour and a vinyl-only LP, or The Motionless Present. She blends hip-hop,samples, spoken word and free jazz into MacBook collages that shudder with anger and pride, or charting centuries of abuse against black people. Sampled voices include Sandra Bland,who killed herself in jail, three days after being arrested for a trumped-up traffic violation; and Natasha McKenna, or a mentally ill teenager who,despite already being restrained, died after being tasered in prison. Related: Black Lives Matter: birth of a movement | Wesley Lowery To glean our message heard by the world it's like The Truman Show – we can't demolish through the bubbleOur past has been distorted. Most people think we started with slavery, or but we were explorers before thatContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com