Review – Moor Mother – Fetish Bones

If there is one word you should think of when listening to Afrofuturist collective Black Quantum Futurism member Moor Mother’s Fetish Bones, it should be this: Sankofa.
For those not aware of the word, Sankofa is based on a bird that flies forward while looking backward. It’s a symbol of making sure to never forget your past, never forget your roots, and to always use it as a way to shape your future. This very thing is what Fetish Bones is based off of. With it’s innovative and intense mixture of digital hardcore, hip-hop or spoken word, and noise, Moor Mother sneers at those who dare tear down her kind and see them as not just a target, but disposable. The very first track in all of its bewitching sounds of pulsating static, maracas and vocals, the music wants to take us from the past over to the future we are in now.
“Creation Myth” sets the scene with a story that tells of how black women were treated as targets and disposable to their ancestors, and how not much of a change has happened today with police victims such as Sandra Bland. In one fell swoop, she tackles the fetishizing of black lives (“Deadbeat Protest”), paranoia after recent killings (“Tell Me About It”), constant violence within cities (“Cabrini Green x Natasha Mkenna”), and her harnessing her own strength as a black woman only to grow up and be labeled as someone people don’t share an attraction to (“By the Light”) …and none of it was meant to be delivered with ease. Speeches from the past, gospels and instruments were all played to add to an album that doesn’t seek anything more than resolve. But how do you ask for resolve of something that doesn’t seem to want to reach an end?