Philly’s Avant-music goddess Moor Mother shoots and scores a record deal with ANTI- and releases a new single, Zami.
Forever an independent releasing artist (and often) with several Bandcamp lists to prove it, Philadelphia musician, vocalist, poet and visual artist Moor Mother, AKA Camae Ayewa, announced her signing to ANTI- Records this morning with a new single as part of the deal in “Zami.” Simultaneously, Moor Mother announces her upcoming virtual showcase through the local Bowerbird arts organization with an online premiere, Wednesday, June 30 at 7 pm, EST.
North Philly’s Moor Mother has been making dicey, harsh experimental music ripe with locally inspired activist poetry since dropping her debut album in 2016, Fetish Bones. Since that time, she has released fistfuls of recorded music every year (e.g. 2017’s solo The Motionless Present and her Crime Waves collab with fellow Philly producer Mental Jewelry and Clepsydra). In 2020 alone, Moor Mother was responsible for the Anthologia series of recorded efforts designed to raise funds for disability justice, a new jazz hip hop record with Mental Jewelry, Forever Industries, and an album with rapper billy woods, BRASS. In 2019, she expanded her range to include a self-penned and performed FringeArts-based futuristic theater piece, Circuit City.
For her June 30 premiere Bowerbird event, Moor Mother will play a part in a virtual, live portrait of composer and virtuoso pianist Frederic Rzewski. The concert will feature the world premiere of a new music video of Rzewski’s “Coming Together” made by Moor Mother with video artist Bob Sweeney, shot recently at Eastern State Penitentiary and featuring a musical performance by the Arcana New Music Ensemble.
Though no new album is mentioned through ANTI- as yet, on Wednesday, June 2 she released the new track “Zami”, produced by collaborator Madam Data, with a note of explanation.
“‘No more master’s clock / we travel spaceways’; “Zami” speaks to a number of different themes,” Ayewa explains in a prepared statement. “Using the lenses of Black Quantum Futurism, the lyrics speak to Time and Space, injustice, racism, erasure of African identity. “Zami” speaks of agency and something beyond freedom. It speaks of another future. It speaks about connections free from the stains of colonialism. It speaks about the expansive temporalities of Afro Diasporan people around the world.”
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