Arts
Tones for a Black President by Brightmoments on Mixcloud From Gil Scott Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon,” to Lord Beginner’s “General Election,” to most of Fela Kuti’s recording catalog, the list of classic protest songs that call out the tacit travesties of our political system with the deadpan force of the literal and exact, is long, robust, hope for the conversation on earth. Rather than compiling all of those in a necessary barrage, this round of our Feed is an attempt to capture, inhabit, and re-think the mood of the election upon us by way of an astrosonic map we keep crumpling up dejectedly, then uncoiling, navigating again with the joie de vivre of children, then crumpling again, then like young again, until much of the mood has to do with the dynamic between those two opposing gestures, the poetics of that dynamic, the town hall debate reimagined as a jam session we’re so close to walking out on when some anonymous poet stands up and recites the poem that makes us wonder, ‘what is all this joy and justice.’ What’s it like to be black in outer space. What’s it like to be black in the white house. In the town hall. In the towncar bumping Motown. How many poems and songs does it cost us to cross back and forth between consciousnesses as such, and should we write those records and let them sigh and gasp, always true to their fashion, until our imaginations slap us with another win and we act all inevitable together again. Let’s do this. Let’s try.