Two monumental, apocalyptic works, Octavia E. Butler’s dystopian novel, Parable of the Sower, and The Book of Revelation, the final book of the New Testament, were explored in two unique performances by formidable groups of musicians and vocalisers assembled by poet / musician / artist Camae Ayewa aka Moor Mother.
Following on from Moor Mother’s self-generated magnum opus, The Great Bailout, seen at the Barbican in 2019, and, on an intimate scale at Church of Sound last year, this 2-day residency saw her take on, with equal ambition, two hellish, futuristic texts with uncanny parallels in their dark themes.
Parable of the Sower (1993) is a prescient, science-fiction nightmare set in Los Angeles between 2024, eighteen years after the author’s death, and 2027. Narrated by a fifteen year old Black woman, Lauren Olamina, in diary format, this is LA in a US with widespread anarchy, urban decay and extreme poverty, endemic gun violence, looting and murder, deadly epidemics, drug induced arson, tornadoes, blizzards and rainstorms and the newly elected US President Donner with an agenda alarmingly close to that of the current administration. An LA where ‘some walled communities, bigger and stronger than this one just aren’t there any more.’
The Book of Revelation, also known as the Book of the Apocalypse, is rooted in an atmosphere of cataclysmic awe and brutality with fearsome imagery, arguably also a fiction anticipating potential catastrophe.
Poetry preludes
As a prelude to each performance, Moor Mother recited from her 2024 poetry collection, American Equations in Black Classical Music, confronting the uncomfortable histories and violence inherent in American society, while celebrating the deep achievements of Black musicians and music cultures.
On the opening night, in her disarmingly relaxed style, she said how much she loved the venue and that it was a miracle that Cafe Oto has these dates free for her.
In Ayewa’s vibrant, densely packed poetry, every word counts and the listener has to grasp them out of the air. In Classical Economics 1, the question ‘What is American Music?’ was answered with a stirring roll-call of jazz, blues, native tribal, enslaved, imprisoned and many other music-makers. To pick out a few: ‘Yoruba Drum Language … / Hamid Drake’s drum kit on the banks of Jordan … / Sun Ra Reminiscing in Tempo Black Feeling … / Sam Rivers thinking of Oceans … / Burning Spear Soundsystem / It sounds like / The First Slave Ship … / Black Seminoles & Choktaw’.
Music Industry Equations 1, 2 and 3 asked, amongst others, ‘How much money does Jerry Lee Lewis owe Little Richard?’ and from Blues Time II Ayewa revisited a subject close to her heart: ‘Now That’s The Blues / Movement And Sound Dissolved In To The Colour Of Dreams’, echoing lyrics in her recording, Brass: ‘The blues remembers everything the country forgot / Bloodstain, sweat, slip-knot.’
On night two Moor Mother was joined by Elaine Mitchener who added breathy echoes and micro-percussion to the poetry. This Planet Is A Scene Of A Crime with ‘Its stolen land and bloodhounds’ where ‘We know a mob is a mob / Demented, senile, rabid’, was followed by The Black Time Belt & Its Quantum Future: ‘Ain’t No Humanity On Earth / That’s Why We Travel The Space-Ways’ evoking the world of Sun Ra, then a link to her visceral, no-holds barred debut, Fetish Bones (2016) – ‘What Do They Say, Chicago? / Read The Bones’.
Night 1
Given the dates of the residency, Moor Mother focused on the diary entries 2-6 March 2025 in the fifth chapter of The Parable of the Sower, eerily describing a situation maybe only two steps from today’s reality, as the basis of her performance with Pat Thomas, Imani Mason Jordan, Shenece Oretha and Dirar Kalash.
From a brightly tense, low-key start with Thomas’s micro-electronics and touches within the piano and Moor Mother’s rattling of small hand-held bells, Kalash brought the spirit of Derek Bailey to his spare, obliquely-fashioned guitar notes while Imani Mason Jordan’s voice hovered on the edges of the audible. Repetition was key to the power of the piece, with quotes from the book being shared by Imami and Oretha, with their complementary vocal ranges, and Moor Mother cutting through at key moments.
Thomas brought in hints of the church organ as the death by gunshot of the forlorn, three years old Amy Dunn was discovered, and the vocal repetition of ‘she dead…dead … dead’ was brought home with Moor Mother’s cracking of a stick on a hard surface and Kalash’s rumbling, menacing bass notes. Distortion emphasised the horrors of finding the body and it first being mistaken for ‘another bundle … thrown over the gate … gifts of envy and hate: A maggoty head, dead animal, a bag of shit, even an occasional severed human limb or a dead child.’ Spiky piano chords and thrumming guitar underpinned the desperate calls – ‘I wish I could get out of here’, ‘Don’t you ever wonder what will happen to the rest of us?’
The connected, collaborative approach, combining an essential familiarity with the text and an inherent improvising awareness, gelled in recounting this harrowing chapter from Butler’s compelling saga.
Night 2
The terrifying images of Revelations 7, 8, 9 and 10 of the Book of Revelation were the focus on night two of Moor Mother with Elaine Mitchener, Imani Mason Jordan and the 8-strong Shovel Dance Collective who added a flux of textures to support the sung and spoken text – on everything from harp to clarinets, flutes, banjo and guitar, violin, a drone box and other stringed instruments.
The starting point, ‘there was silence in heaven’ (after the seventh seal was opened), was echoed by breathy flute and Moor Mother ominously ringing a hand-held bell. Vibrato bass clarinet and the strong voice of Mataio Austin Dean combined with the three vocalists to introduce the seven trumpet-blowing angels and the horrors and devastation which they unleashed.
Grinding violin, bowed banjo and guitar, and shaken hand-held bells combined to make up the atmosphere for Mitchener’s powerful, distorted singing, Imani’s hollered phrasing and Moor Mother’s grimacing delivery to summon up the smoke, fire and brimstone (sulphur) released from the mouths of the horses of the millions of riders in the apocalyptic vision, killing one third of mankind, burning up the earth, turning the sea to blood, and obliterating light from the day, the night and the stars.
At a key point each of the players read simultaneously from their copies of the text to create a multi-layered, voiced cacophony complementing the musical accompaniments, which included Joshua Barfoot beating out a portentous rhythm on the skin of a hand-held bodhrán for others to build on.
The imagery was fearsome – the bottomless pit letting out smoke ‘like a great furnace’, releasing locusts with breastplates of iron and stings like scorpions used to torture but not kill. Mitchener brought out the pain after the scroll presented by an angel had been consumed. ‘… as soon as I’d eaten it my belly was bitter.’ And to round off, the angel, with a face like the sun and legs like pillars of fire, wrapped in a cloud with a rainbow over their head had Moor Mother spit out, ‘And I saw his face’, then Imani quietly announce, ‘The end’. Everything stopped except Moor Mother gently ringing the disc of hand-held bells for maybe four minutes. A perfect ending.
In these two epic pieces, Moor Mother had thrown today’s reality in to disturbing perspective, articulating order within chaos and chaos within order.
Personnel
1 March
Moor Mother (vocals, misc. instruments)
Pat Thomas (piano, electronics)
Imani Mason Jordan (vocals)
Shenece Oretha (vocals)
Dirar Kalash (guitar)
2 March
Moor Mother (vocals, misc. instruments)
Elaine Mitchener (vocals, misc. instruments)
Imani Mason Jordan (vocals)
Shovel Dance Collective – 8 members (various instruments)
