Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa Ann Inez)

source: thevinylfactory 📸: ???

Moor Mother — The Great Bailout (ANTI-)

Photo by Ebru Yildiz

Camae Ayewa, aka Moor Mother, has a genuine claim towards being one of the busiest artists working today. Over the past five years she has taken part in more than ten albums, with sounds spanning unpredictable hip-hop experimentation to free jazz odyssies. The Great Bailout represents yet another left turn, taking sonic inspiration from glitch and concrete poetry and working with noise veterans such as C. Spencer Yeh and Aaron Dilloway to put together something truly haunting. On this record, Moor Mother bears witness to centuries of violence, death and horror at the hands of European colonialism and white supremacy. She spits its debris back at the listener and forcing us to contend with our ability to remain nonchalant in its seemingly never-ending cycle.

The first thing heard on this record is not Ayewa, but rather the intonations of Raia Was and Lonnie Holley over the twinkling harp of Mary Lattimore. Was’ fluttering vocals could not contrast more with Holley’s powerful warble, but both convey the dread and weariness that come with continuing to survive in a society that offers nothing but death in return. Three minutes into the track, Ayewa sets the scene for the rest of the record: “Taxpayers of erasure, of relapse, of amnesia, paying the crimes off.” This is perhaps the condition of being an everyday citizen, living in a state that never shook off the ghosts of colonialism, if it ever even tried in the first place. On “ALL THE MONEY,” over an ominous dub-inflected beat, Ayewa lists off British national landmarks and the years they were established, building up to the British Museum, one of the world’s largest resources of stolen cultural landmarks. “They heard about the kingdoms of gold,” Ayewa states. “They heard about the books of mathematics, philosophy and rituals.” The title of the album could be interpreted a number of different ways, but in this context it is clear that Europe stole so much from Africa to bail out its own moral and spiritual failures.

One of the highlights of the album is “LIVERPOOL WINS,” which features Aaron Dilloway contributing a typically clattering, ugly backing track. “Payouts, bailouts, just enough to build the city, a country, an infrastructure, a financial revolution, a stronger christianity, a whiter God, a period of enlightenment,” lists Ayewa. “Who builds death like this?” This question resonates through the entire record. Towards the end of the record “SOUTH SEA,” featuring the contributions of Chicago jazz mainstay Angel Bat Dawid and her vocal group Sistazz of the Nitty Gritty, feels like a requiem for what’s been lost, both material and immaterial, in the fray of colonialism. “How many have to be slaughtered in front of you before you choke on your own tears?” Ayewa asks. “Before your brain convinces you that you are already dead and if you are still breathing, you shouldn’t be?” It’s difficult to listen to these questions without thinking of horrific images from Gaza, Sudan and the Congo, all of which are stark reminders that the same forces that bailed out Europe are continuing to fuck up the world to this day. There isn’t a singular, clear message of hope on The Great Bailout, but in documenting the rage and despair built into life under such a ugly and evil system, Moor Mother has provided something just as valuable — if not more so— in understanding the struggles of the present day.

Levi Dayan

Pitchfork Music Festival 2023: 5 Can’t-miss Non-headliner Sets

700 Bliss

BY JORDAN MAINZER

After four long years, yours truly finally returns to Pitchfork Music Festival. While the pandemic cancelled 2020′s iteration, contributor Daniel Palella filled in for 2021, and we entirely missed 2022 (I got married!), four years lacking Chicago’s most laid-back, yet forward thinking festival proved to be too many. While I can’t wait to see The Smile, Big Thief, and Bon Iver, I’d be remiss not to recommend these 5 can’t-miss non-headliner sets.

Trevor Powers of Youth Lagoon; Photo by Tyler T. Williams

FRIDAY

Youth Lagoon, 4:15 PM, Green Stage

Last month, Trevor Powers released Heaven Is a Junkyard (Fat Possum) his first Youth Lagoon music since 2015′s Savage Hills Ballroom. If earlier, beloved Youth Lagoon records were miniature epics that embraced a sort of hazy nostalgia, Heaven Is a Junkyard is more subdued, soulful, and limited in scope. It’s also Powers’ most focused and best record, the deepest he’s dived into a world. In 2021, Powers lost his voice as a result of a horrific reaction to an over-the-counter medication, eventually losing 30 pounds and, temporarily, his ability to speak. As a result of the unfortunate circumstances, he went into a deep depression, but thankfully decided to focus his energy on Idaho, and ultimately, his songwriting and the return of Youth Lagoon. Heaven Is a Junkyard could be difficult to listen to, with images of blood-stained clothes and drug addicts sleeping outside on mattresses. It’s not because of Powers’ embrace of his surroundings. “Heaven is a junkyard / And it’s my home,” he sings on “The Sling”. His clear sense of empathy for the downtrodden shapes his familial perspectives, too, thankful for brotherly love, even if disguised as roughhousing, on “Prizefighter” and “Trapeze Artist”. And Heaven Is a Junkyard is musically adventurous, too, from the looped drums, handclaps, and cello of “Mercury” to the ghostly synth arpeggios of “Helicopter Toy” and disintegrating ambient instrumental interlude “Lux Radio Theatre”, which wouldn’t sound out of place on a Boards of Canada album. Live, expect to hear much of Heaven Is a Junkyard along with cuts from the first two Youth Lagoon albums.

SATURDAY

700 BLISS, 2:30 PM, Green Stage

One of our favorite albums of last year was the sophomore LP from 700 BLISS, the venerable duo of poet/musician Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother) and DJ Haram. Nothing To Declare, their first record for Hyperdub, traverses genres (techno, noise, ambient) and moods (serious and political, facetious and sarcastic). Get there early on Saturday for some heady words and beats in the sun!

SUNDAY

JPEGMAFIA, 4:15 PM, Green Stage

In 2019, rapper JPEGMAFIA gave the most energetic set at Pitchfork. This year should be no different: Since then, he released one of our favorite albums of that year mere months later, a very good follow-up two years after that, and this year, a collaborative album with his favorite rapper, Danny Brown. He’s called the new one, SCARING THE HOES (Awal), a “practice album,” made with the SP-404--no Pro Tools--after learning it for a year. It certainly has that loose quality you’d think, alongside the exact amount of chaos you’d expect from the debut full-length join-up from these two. Of course, Peggy finds kinship in the deep cuts and the underground, from the underappreciated Bun B to old soul and funk, Japanese pop, and gospel. The samples and production are inspired. At the same time, Peggy knows he’s your favorite Twitter follow’s favorite rapper, so the title itself, referring to something a Very Online Man would say who thinks his taste is too esoteric for women, is tongue-in-cheek. “How the fuck we supposed to make money of this shit?” Peggy asks on the title track. “You wanna be an MC? What the fuck you think, it’s 1993?” The only thing better than effortless tempo changes, switches on a dime from maximalism to dreamy instrumentation, is self-awareness of his own idiosyncrasies. Bonus points for “God Loves You”, which juxtaposes a guttural, spirited gospel sample with the filthiest lyrics on the album.

Sarah Tudzin of illuminati hotties; Photo by Seannie Bryan

illuminati hotties, 5:15, Blue Stage

It’s been a big past few years for Sarah Tudzin, the frontperson of LA indie rock band illuminati hotties. Their 2021 record Let Me Do One More (Hopeless) was released to acclaim, one of our favorites of that year. She contributed a remix to the deluxe addition of the latest Stars album as well as production to a few songs on boygenius’ the record. Best, she’s apparently finishing up her next record. Perhaps the first taste of it is “Truck”, released yesterday ahead of the band’s Pitchfork performance and tour with boygenius. It’s a slice of gentle, lilting Americana, a song about chasing your dreams versus learning to live with reality. Expect to hear it during the band’s set at Pitchfork, along with some rambunctious, hilarious back catalog jammers.

Kelela, 7:25 PM, Red Stage

The brilliant R&B artist’s second studio album, Raven (Warp), is a culmination of a period of reflection following her debut album six years prior, Take Me Apart. Despite electronic dance music’s Black and queer origins, Kelela’s feeling restrained within the music world as it exists today, within its white, male hegemonic power structure. She’s keeping on anyway, and on Raven, she delivers a brilliantly paced back and forth between club jams and slow burns, beat-heavy tracks and ambient expressions. There are plenty of songs about relationships and the dissolution thereof, but Kelela can control what she can control: her artistic voice. “Through all the labor / A raven is reborn / They tried to break her / There’s nothing here to mourn,” she declares on the pulsating, zooming title track, as the instrumentation gradually and masterfully builds with sprinkles of piano and dramatic strings. And on standout “Contact”, Kelela captures a night out, from the come-up to the club or party itself. It’s a dance song that could have dominated the charts in an alternate 90′s universe. One thing’s for sure: It’ll be a highlight at this year’s festival.

“In the future, the past and future are not cut off from the present. Both dimensions influence the whole of our lives, who we are and who we become at any particular point in space-time. In this future, we have dismantled oppressive, hegemonic temporalities and timelines and developed, recovered, and synthesized healthy alternative temporal dynamics in our communities and the world.

We see this work as cyclical, ongoing, dynamic, generative, and generations-long.  We project a vision of our shared future(s) where we have actively begun to address how future(s) are made inaccessible to marginalized communities in general and Black people in particular. We have developed positive futurity concepts and sustainable technologies of joy that benefit low-income, vulnerable, and marginalized communities. We see ‘in the future’  an active engagement with temporalities and alternative temporal orientations -  to quote Rifkin, ‘the new time rebels advocate a radically different approach to temporality.’”

Moor Mother - Woody Shaw (feat. Melanie Charles) (Jazz Codes, 2022)

Directed and Edited by Cyrus Moussavi

Pre-order, stream & download: https://moormother.ffm.to/jazzcodes

Camae Ayewa, having explored the origins of Black music on 2022’s Jazz Codes, is now interested in the horrors of colonialism. (via MOOR MOTHER "The Great Bailout" | The Line of Best Fit)

Listen to The Great Bailout on Bandcamp

“As a poet, composer, educator, audiovisual artist, activist and playwright, Moor Mother’s Camae Ayewa connects with people in any environment – be it her native Philly DIY scene, teaching in LA or her residency at Cern. She dubs her approach “Black quantum futurism”, exploring sound’s potential to evoke memories as a vehicle for navigating time. Thus her music sustains a constant, complementary tension between the hushed, folkloric mantras and defiant Afrofuturist litanies she shares, her sound drawing freely from noise, jazz, blues and beats while respecting the practice of each mode. Her latest album is an ambitious anthropological undertaking, looking to map out a history of Black classical – music of the jazz continuum – that stretches into the future as well as the past.”

Moor Mother, Jazz Codes

New music Wednesday

Camae Ayewa, the rapper, musician, poet and activist behind the moniker Moor Mother rendered an album which is framed with textured jazz and contemporary soul and hip-hop hues. The production is full of guest and it serves as an extension of last year's Black Encyclopedia of The Air.

VA - Red Hot & Ra: Nuclear War - A Tribute to Sun Ra: Volume 1 - takes on  “Nuclear War” by Georgia Anne Muldrow, Angel Bat Dawid, and Irreversible Entanglements!

01. Georgia Anne Muldrow - Nuke’s Blues (Feat. Josef Leimberg) (written by Georgia Anne Muldrow, Josef Leimberg & Sun Ra) Georgia Anne Muldrow - Vocals / Track / Synth Josef Leimberg - Trumpet / Piano Taso Anastasios - OP1 keyboard / engineer 02.-04. Angel Bat Dawid - Nuclear War: A Cosmic Myth Science Trilogy (Written by Angel Bat Dawid & Sun Ra) The Cosmic Ensemble Angel Bat Dawid - Piano, Clarinet, Vocals, Synths Jaden Berkman (Jaytheziah) - Bass, Guitar, Flute, Saxophone Alejandro Salazar - Percussion The Cosmic Children Rayna Golding, Mahari Ajani Collier The Cosmic Choir Monique Golding, Phillip Armstrong, Camila Isabel, Tramaine Parker, Erica Nwachukwu Arranged & Mixed by Angel Bat Dawid Inspired by Sun Ra’s Nuclear War 05. Malcolm Jiyane Tree-o - We're Not Buying It (Feat. Grandmaster CAP) (written by Fani Malcolm Jiyane, Nhlanhla Masondo & Sun Ra ) Ayanda Zalekile - Electric Bass & Vocals Gontse Makhene - Percussion & Backing Vocals Grandmaster CAP - MC Lungile Kunene - Drums & Backing Vocals Malcolm Jiyane - Piano, Keyboards & Backing Vocals Tubatsi Moloi - Electric Guitar, Flute & Backing Vocals 06. Irreversible Entanglements - Nuclear War (Written by Sun Ra) Keir Neuringer - Saxophone Tcheser Holmes - Drums Aquiles Navarro - Trumpet Luke Stewart - Bass Camae Ayewa - Vocals

A collection of electronic recordings uncovered from the archives of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad capture a moment of self-discovery where Western drone and minimalist music segued with classical Indian forms. The New York improvisational stalwart Relative Pitch unearths Evan Parker’s first ever visit to the Big Apple, when the saxophonist played solo at the influential loft jazz venue Environ. Through torn bits, toiling consonants, tempestuous islands and teetering psychedelics, Roomful of Teeth continue to dismantle traditional notions of ensemble singing. And the quintet of Keir Neuringer, Tcheser Holmes, Aquiles Navarro, Luke Stewart and Camae Ayewa as Irreversible Entanglements offer a scorched take on ‘Nuclear War’ by Sun Ra, carrying us right into the fiery heart of the action with charred-black banter then out the other side as all of our trifling concerns fuse with the posterior or flicker like fading sparks and embers in the rear-view. Tracks by Zeena Parkins, billy woods, María Dueñas, Kayhan Kalhor, Toumani Diabaté, Klein and Delphine Dora also feature in the latest roundup.

https://culturedarm.com/tracks-of-the-week-06-05-23/

Moor Mother (aka Camae Ayewa) and L’Rain (aka Taja Cheek) are two artists I’ve been intrigued by for some time now, and tonight I finally saw the two of them perform, in collaboration with fellow multi-instrumentalists Kevin Beasley, Ben Chapoteau-Katz and Eli Keszler. What a show! It was a symphony of avant-jazz, ambient sound, tape manipulation, modular synths, spoken word and free-form vocals. I only found out about this show last night and somehow managed to get in before it totally sold out. I’m very grateful, because it was incredible. Incidentally, this was the second “in the round” show I’ve seen this week and I could definitely get used to it. Killer room too, btw. (at Performance Space New York) https://www.instagram.com/p/CqKAQrLtBiD/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Moor Mother  (Camae Ayewa)

source: actumusikafrika

Irreversible Entanglements — Protect Your Light (Impulse!)

Photo by Piper Ferguson

Given their sense of history and commitment to consciousness raising music it is entirely appropriate that Irreversible Entanglements should sign to Impulse! The home of John & Alice Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders and many of the other artists in whose steps the band follows. Partially recorded in Rudy Van Gelder’s Englewood Cliffs studio, Irreversible Entanglements focus their power on Protect Your Light. The eight tracks are shorter than we’ve come to expect but more expansive in both style and instrumentation. Poet Camae Ayewa continues her dissection of racist structures and celebration of the transformative power of culture and community. Her delivery measured and deliberate, as if now, in these times, clarity of meaning and purpose are paramount. She and bassist Luke Stewart, drummer Tcheser Holmes, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and saxophonist Keir Neuringer double up on synthesizers, percussion, studio effects and overdubs to broaden their sound. The addition of guest artists amplifies the band’s commitment to community. Fly or Die cellist Leslie St Lewis, composer/poet Janice Low and vocalist Sovie make telling contributions.

The highlights are many. When “Free Love” breaks into a joyful march, the horns exultant over a rolling rhythm and Ayewa’s voice overdubbed and tripping with excitement. Lowe’s piano, Holmes’ thunderous drumming and Navarro’s spiraling solo during Ayewa’s exploration of the racist, colonial roots of capitalism on “Our Land Back.” Luke Stewart’s “Soundness” is Irreversible Entanglements at their knottiest, coolly enunciated words ring clear over rattling percussion, double tracked bass lines and horns that dance and duel. A surface of multiplicities swirling from a singular oceanic source. “root⇔branch,” celebrates the joyous energy of the late jaimie branch’s genre fluid music with St Lewis’s cello motif opening before a squall of synthesizers and trumpet explode into the chant of “We can all be free.” Lowe leads the ballad “Sunshine,” her voice evoking Minnie Riperton with Navarro’s muted trumpet and Holmes’ brushed drums contrasting with a tempest of synthesizer effects.

Ayewa remains a powerfully charismatic voice but as she points out Irreversible Entanglements is a collective, a band who combine to produce music of extraordinary invention, power and delicacy. Protect Your Light takes its place alongside Fire Music, Karma, Interstellar Space and the many other vital records recorded by Van Gelder for Impulse! Although explicit in their acknowledgement of that legacy, Irreversible Entanglements are looking forward, stepping up from the shoulders of the giants to shape a body of work that demands attention.

Andrew Forell

Moor Mother - "Mangrove" (feat. Elucid & Antonia Gabriela)

"Mangrove" (feat. Elucid & Antonia Gabriela) by Moor Mother from the album 'Black Encyclopedia of the Air.

Camae Ayewa (born November 19, 1981) better known by her stage name Moor Mother, is an American poet, musician, and activist from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.She is one half of the collective Black Quantum Futurism, along with Rasheedah Phillips,and co-leads the groups Irreversible Entanglements and 700 Bliss.

Ayewa co-leads and provides lyrics and vocals for the "liberation-oriented free-jazz collective" Irreversible Entanglements. She met the quintet's members through musical and activist endeavors: bassist Luke Stewart shared bills with her band the Mighty Paradocs; saxophonist Keir Neuringer worked with Books Through Bars, whose events Ayewa has emceed; and the trio of Ayewa, Stewart, and Neuringer was followed by the duo of trumpeter Aquiles Navarro and drummer Tcheser Holmes at a 2015 Musicians Against Brutality event following the shooting of Akai Gurley. The group performed in the inaugural season of the Kennedy Center's "Direct Current" contemporary culture showcase, and their releases have been included in best-of lists in Magnet, NPR Music, The Quietus, and Stereogum's "20 Best Jazz Albums Of The 2010s". The band's instrumentalists also performed on Ayewa's debut theatrical work, Circuit City.

In the fall of 2021, Ayewa began serving as an assistant professor at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music.

leguesswho.

bala desejo [tim van veen] Love will find a way, love will find a way, love will find a way… Continua a declamare e salmodiare la divina Moor Mother (al secolo, Camae Ayewa) durante il concerto che in un’eventuale classifica finale sarebbe fuori concorso poiché probabilmente è la puntina di diamante dell’edizione 2023 di Le Guess Who?, The Harvest Time Project, ovvero il tributo al compianto…

View On WordPress

Irreversible Entanglements - “Free Love”

Photo by Piper Ferguson

With their 2021 breakthrough full-length, Open the Gates, Irreversible Entanglements -- the experimental jazz collective featuring Moor Mother’s Camae Ayewa, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, drummer Tcheser Holmes, and bassist Luke Stewart -- exploded the free-born elements of their sound to create a sonic diagram of the universe’s energy moving through the human experience. It felt as massive as the cosmos. “Free Love”, the first preview from the band’s fourth full-length effort, Protect Your Light, is as unhindered by boundaries as anything the multi-instrumental, multi-talented group has ventured to create, but there is a concentrated focus on those two words in its title in a micro sense that in turn channels that same big bang energy through the individual, with a mosaic of airborne brass, ground-bending ebbs of rhythm and percussion, and Ayewa’s poetry lifting spirit upward. “Sweet honey / Sticky sweet / You are love / More love.” When all sound settles on her final breath, inner peace is illuminated.

Irreversible Entanglments’ Protect Your Light will be released September 8th on Impulse! Records.