1001 Other Albums<p><strong>Moor Mother – Fetish Bones (2016, US)</strong></p><p>As randomly chosen by survey[1] on Mastodon, our next spotlight is on number 684 on <a href="https://1001otheralbums.com/the-list/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The List</a>, submitted by platenworm.</p><p>I think it would be a disservice to attempt to sum up this album, the debut from poet, visual artist, and musician Moor Mother aka Camae Ayewa. Like all of Moor Mother’s work, it’s a difficult listen, some might think it requires CWs. But it’s a necessary listen. Her work is necessary. It’s truth, it’s harsh, it’s protest in sonic form. As the Bandcamp description says:</p><blockquote><p><em>Fetish Bones</em> is not an album meant to help you forget. It is made so that you will remember the injustices that we bear witness to and participate in.</p></blockquote><p>If you dig this one, I highly recommend going down the Moor Mother/Camae Ayewa rabbit hole. Perhaps track down Ayewa’s <a href="https://www.blackquantumfuturism.com/product-page/copy-of-bqf-theory-amp-practice-vol-i" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">debut book of poetry</a> of the same title, also released in 2016. Or check out other Moor Mother releases, such as that from last year, <em><a href="https://moormother.bandcamp.com/album/the-great-bailout" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Great Bailout</a></em> (which made my personal AOTY list). Or look up her various collabs, such as <a href="https://zonal.bandcamp.com/album/wrecked" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">her collab with ZONAL</a> or <a href="https://sumac.bandcamp.com/album/the-film" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">her collab with SUMAC</a> coming out in April (thanks Pauxlll for those tips!). Or take a while to peruse the website for the <a href="https://www.blackquantumfuturism.com/about" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Black Quantum Futurism</a> collective, “an interdisciplinary practice founded by Camae Ayewa and Rasheedah Phillips that synthesizes quantum physics with Afrodiasporic principles and ontologies of time, space, ritual, text, and sound, yielding an innovative framework for the creation of counterhistories and alternate futures.” Or look up the free jazz group Ayewa is in, Irreversible Entanglements (my entry point to Ayewa), perhaps starting with <a href="https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/irreversible-entanglements" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">their 2017 s/t</a> or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKnifgh9dEQ" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">their AMAZING 2024 Tiny Desk Concert</a>. I swear, if you have 27 minutes and click on that last link, you might even find yourself equipped with some courage, perhaps even a smidgen of hope, to face what’s coming, what’s here.</p><ul><li><a href="https://moormother.bandcamp.com/album/fetish-bones" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Bandcamp: Moor Mother – <em>Fetish Bones</em></a></li><li><a href="https://www.discogs.com/master/1080683-Moor-Mother-Fetish-Bones" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Discogs: Moor Mother – <em>Fetish Bones</em></a></li><li><a href="https://moormother.net/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Website: Moor Mother</a></li></ul><ol><li>The survey choices that initially led to this spotlight were “You’re the letter from Jesus on the bathroom wall”, “You’re mother superior in only a bra”, and “You’re the same kind of bad as me”, after an earlier survey with “You’re the head on the spear”/“You’re the nail on the cross”/“You’re the fly in my beer”/“You’re the key that got lost”. The second option was the winning selection, and so the survey result was translated as picking the second album in The List that contained a word in the phrase – in this case, “mother”. ↩︎</li></ol><p></p><p><a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/1001otheralbums/" target="_blank">#1001OtherAlbums</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/afrofuturism/" target="_blank">#Afrofuturism</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/avantgarde/" target="_blank">#avantgarde</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/camae-ayewa/" target="_blank">#CamaeAyewa</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/experimental/" target="_blank">#experimental</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/free-jazz/" target="_blank">#freeJazz</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/irreversible-entanglements/" target="_blank">#IrreversibleEntanglements</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/listen-to-this/" target="_blank">#ListenToThis</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/moor-mother/" target="_blank">#MoorMother</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/music/" target="_blank">#music</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/music-discovery/" target="_blank">#musicDiscovery</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/musodon-2/" target="_blank">#Musodon</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/poetry/" target="_blank">#poetry</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/protest-music/" target="_blank">#protestMusic</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://1001otheralbums.com/tag/spoken-word/" target="_blank">#spokenWord</a></p>