4. Moor MotherFetish Bones
Louise, my wife, became aware of Moor Mother possibly through going down trails on Spotify – I think Spotify is an evil thing, but at least the algorithm used to be better before – and she just became totally hooked. We were living in New Orleans in Tremé, a very poor neighbourhood that was 95 per cent Black. It’s the oldest Black neighbourhood in the whole country, it was set up outside the city walls in the 1790s by a local French landowner who subdivided his property into lots and then sold them mainly but not exclusively to what the French called ‘gens de couleur libres’ – free people of colour.
[Moor Mother’s music] was the reality of something that we can’t ever really appreciate or understand – which is just what it means to be poor and Black in America, and just how at the bottom of everything you are. It was a real learning curve. I think if we’d had more awareness of the realities of the situation I don’t know if we’d have been quite so gung-ho about simply moving there. But in a way I’m still glad that we did, because it was a lesson in just how much people will persuade themselves that poor people are something to be frightened of, and how this fear of poor Black people that permeates America is a fear of Black people generally. This crushing weight. We would have neighbours’ kids come borrow the computer to look for jobs like kitchen portering, and the wages on offer were like, $1 an hour plus tips. A lot of guys around us had been in prison, the vast majority for nothing, or possession of tiny amounts of extremely weak weed. Louisiana incarcerates more of its citizens per head of population than any other polity on the planet, and one of the reasons is effectively to create a labour force. It’s back door slavery.
This album is that reality, it shows an experience that you can’t understand if you haven’t lived it. We were only living alongside the people who have lived it. You realise how tied up with American social history racism actually is. It’s such a beautifully constructed piece of work, she says everything that she needs to say. She’s an astonishing artist. We spoke to her at a show in London, and Louise put her on at a friend’s space on St. Claude Avenue in New Orleans. It was interesting because we’d seen her a few times but only in mainly white audiences, where she’s completely affable but she’ll let you know that you’re complicit! This was a Black audience, largely female, a real New Orleans crowd dressed up to the nines looking fucking great. She’s formidable.
