Best New Tracks - Pitchfork: Moor Mother’s “Georgia+Mass” Turns the Electronic Collage Into Protest Art

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Moor Mother’s “Georgia+Mass” Turns the Electronic Collage Into Protest Art Posted: 25 Jul 2016 02:45 PM PDT The genius of Camae Ayewa—musician, activist, organizer, curator, poet—has been percolating underground for the better part of a decade. As Moor Mother, the Philly-based artist has released some 100 recordings online since she began the project in 2012, masterfully reimagining the electronic noise collage as protest song. Ayewa makes beats, bashes punk chords, and raps, fusing these elements seamlessly with samples that have ranged from the late Maya Angelou reading her poem “A Brave and Startling Truth” to Fugazi’s “Waiting Room” bassline. Ayewa’s searing themes tie it together; her lyrics focus on systemic racism. “Malcolm X was my childhood hero,” Ayewa has said, and she has described the sound of Moor Mother as “blk girl blues,” “coffee shop riot gurl songs,” “project housing bop,” “anthropology of conscience,” “slaveship punk,” “death poems.” The first Moor Mother LP, Fetish Bones, arrives in September, but the rhythms of “Georgia+Mass” are a fitting introduction. Ayewa says the eight-minute piece is about “investigating alternative methods of healing.” It rolls on like a deep meditation in gorgeous free jazz sax and cosmic textures, with a grounding om occasionally zipping in to rumble below the surface. Its joyful noise features samples from the gospel ensemble Georgia Mass Choir’s “Come in the Room” as well as of legends Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, plus 10 of her own tracks and a spoken clip about erasure. Ayewa’s music intends the opposite: “It has a lot to do with awakening memories,” she has said. You can hear history inside of it, building momentum, rolling into the future.