Album Release: Moor Mother, Beethoven Orchester Bonn & Wooden Elephant

The primal force of the spoken word collides with evocativemusic that pierces the heart: the
irrepressible power of Moor Mother’s apocalyptic album is visceral. This spellbinding symphonic version created for the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn and the string quintet Wooden Elephant by Ian Anderson, the impassioned opus by the radical American poet becomes a grandiose Gesamtkunstwerk that touches the soul.

This world premiere recording cannot be pigeonholed into any genre. It is music with a powerful message that stirs and overwhelms. It is about racism, about structural and institutionalised violence, as expressed in harrowing images: “It’s so soft to the skin, in the lands and the cotton fields of democracy. […] My mama, my grandmama, my great-greatgreat grandmama picked so much cotton they saved the world, all by themselves.”

The critically acclaimed artist Moor Mother has been praised for her thought-provoking lyrics and fearless approach to sound art showcasing her boundary-pushing sonic experiments. The New York Times hailed her as part of “a new generation of visionary black storytellers”. She describes her intention as “trying to get the audience to understand another way of digesting the truth.”

The Myth Hold Weight is the gravitational centre of this dramaturgically superbly designed work. Despite all the justified anger, defiance and rebellion, it gives the oppressed a way out of the spiral of violence and hopelessness to a haven of peace. The movement is followed by a mind-expanding
maelstrom of sound in Sonic Black Holes that echoes the empathetic “I can feel you.”

Podcast of the Beethoven Orchester Bonn – Episode 53 with Ian Anderson