MUSIC
Moor Mother’s Revolutionary Signals
Artist drops album “Black Encyclopedia of the Air”
BY STEVE ERICKSON
We’re used to easily absorbable
music. Due
to TikTok’s minutelong
video limit, pop
songs now lead with their hooks.
Robby Ricch’s “The Box” initially
blew up on TikTok because of the
rapper’s “ee-er” screech at its very
start. Even on streaming services,
songs have taken precedence over
albums, which are now seen as
opportunities for individuals and
offi cial playlists to carve them up
at will. If this gives the listener a
certain freedom, it’s resulted in a
vast amount of “fast food music”
intended to be heard a few times
and then forgotten about.
Queer spoken word artist/rapper
Moor Mother’s “Black Encyclopedia
of the Air” does not reveal itself on a
fi rst listen, or even the fi rst few. Moor
Mother (Camae Ayewa) uses the full
range of her voice, whispering and
mumbling. She even pitches her voice
up to double herself. “Temporal Control
of Light Echoes” is a solo song,
but it sounds like a duet with a robot.
She doesn’t harmonize with herself,
but uses her own voice and others in
conversation with themselves. Her
voice is so deep that it almost sounds
artifi cially slowed down. Her lyrics
are important but sometimes hard
to make out. The music calls back
to the Roots or Erykah Badu, with
jazzy, watery electric pianos. But the
album sounds relaxed and jittery
at the same time, as paradoxical as
that is.
In 2020, Moor Mother released
three albums in different genres:
punk (“True Opera,” a collaboration
with the band Mental Jewelry),
Moor Mother’s latest album is “Black Encyclopedia of the Air.”
hip-hop (“BRASS,” made
as a duo with billy woods), and
a jazz opera (“Circuit City.”) The
free jazz group she fronts, Irreversible
Entanglements, also put
out an album that year. Her collaborative
ethos is remarkable.
She’s worked with artists as different
as the hardcore band Show
Me the Body and the venerable
jazz group the Art Ensemble of
Chicago. Her feature on “Vexed,”
one of the high points of the Bug’s
London dancehall apocalypse
“Pressure,” shows her prowess
with straightforward hip-hop.
And her music is part of a round
of endeavors including poetry, activism
and teaching.
But she has now signed to a large
indie label, ANTI-Records, releasing
her debut for them. Reaching
a larger audience usually comes
with the expectation that one can
be pinned down for marketing
purposes. With this album, she’s
kept up the collaborative ethos of
her work. Only four songs don’t include
features from other artists.
Her 2016 debut album “Fetish
Bones” laid out a collage of samples
that never quite sounded right
together, with constant references
to America’s history of racism. (She
declared “I’ve been bleeding since
1866” on the opening song “Creation
Myth.”)
In a Pitchfork interview, she admits
“I’m constantly going into different
genres and fi elds to make
the message more accessible…This
record is like a gateway, a trickery:
bringing people in with the smooth
vibes.” Most songs include an element
that introduces anxiety.
Drums aren’t just thrown onto a
song automatically. The percussion
on “Race Function Limited”
comes and goes, out of time with
the rest of the backing track. She
rarely works with standard hi-hat/
snare/kick sounds, drawing on
shakers and African hand drums
instead. “Obsidian” weaves heavily
distorted vocals together over
crackling percussion and distant
piano chords.
Moor Mother pays tribute to her
artistic and spiritual ancestors.
“Zami” was named for the late
out lesbian Audre Lorde’s memoir.
FLICKR/STEVE LOUIE
The video for “Obsidian” was shot
outside John and Alice Coltrane’s
house. Her references looks back to
the late ‘60s and early ‘70s: fusion,
spiritual jazz, proto-hip-hop spoken
word, even Beat poetry. Her lyrics
speak about the damage done by
intergenerational trauma, but they
also look to the future for hope. Her
sci-fi imagery places her work in the
lineage of Afrofuturism, but it also
describes the present. “Zami” says
“we could all die in the name off…,”
but it also calls to dismantle “the
master’s clock” and a world that’s
colonized our minds with technology.
“Clock Fight” expands on that
metaphor. “Temporal Control of
Light Echoes” serves as an intro to
a larger audience, pondering how
she got to this point. The idea that
linear time is a destructive lie runs
through the album.
Having lived with this album
for a week, I feel like I have barely
cracked its surface. In her Pitchfork
interview, Moor Mother lamented
the absence of present-day protest
music. But on “Black Encyclopedia
of the Air,” she forms links with a
community of avant-garde fellow
travelers, describing the toll of living
in a country where they’re not
wanted and trying to open up revolutionary
possibilities.
MOOR MOTHER | “Black Encyclopedia
of the Air” | Anti- Records
October 7 - October 20, 2 20 021 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
