Moor Mother â Fetish Bones (2016, US)
As randomly chosen by survey[1] on Mastodon, our next spotlight is on number 684 on The List, submitted by platenworm.
I think it would be a disservice to attempt to sum up this album, the debut from poet, visual artist, and musician Moor Mother aka Camae Ayewa. Like all of Moor Motherâs work, itâs a difficult listen, some might think it requires CWs. But itâs a necessary listen. Her work is necessary. Itâs truth, itâs harsh, itâs protest in sonic form. As the Bandcamp description says:
Fetish Bones is not an album meant to help you forget. It is made so that you will remember the injustices that we bear witness to and participate in.
If you dig this one, I highly recommend going down the Moor Mother/Camae Ayewa rabbit hole. Perhaps track down Ayewaâs debut book of poetry of the same title, also released in 2016. Or check out other Moor Mother releases, such as that from last year, The Great Bailout (which made my personal AOTY list). Or look up her various collabs, such as her collab with ZONAL or her collab with SUMAC coming out in April (thanks Pauxlll for those tips!). Or take a while to peruse the website for the Black Quantum Futurism collective, âan interdisciplinary practice founded by Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips that synthesizes quantum physics with Afrodiasporic principles and ontologies of time, space, ritual, text, and sound, yielding an innovative framework for the creation of counterhistories and alternate futures.â Or look up the free jazz group Ayewa is in, Irreversible Entanglements (my entry point to Ayewa), perhaps starting with their 2017 s/t or their AMAZING 2024 Tiny Desk Concert. I swear, if you have 27 minutes and click on that last link, you might even find yourself equipped with some courage, perhaps even a smidgen of hope, to face whatâs coming, whatâs here.
The survey choices that initially led to this spotlight were âYouâre the letter from Jesus on the bathroom wallâ, âYouâre mother superior in only a braâ, and âYouâre the same kind of bad as meâ, after an earlier survey with âYouâre the head on the spearâ/âYouâre the nail on the crossâ/âYouâre the fly in my beerâ/âYouâre the key that got lostâ. The second option was the winning selection, and so the survey result was translated as picking the second album in The List that contained a word in the phrase â in this case, âmotherâ. â©ïž#1001OtherAlbums #Afrofuturism #avantgarde #CamaeAyewa #experimental #freeJazz #IrreversibleEntanglements #ListenToThis #MoorMother #music #musicDiscovery #Musodon #poetry #protestMusic #spokenWord