I recorded this track at Johann Helton's Studio in Boise Idaho in October 2000. I was writing towards a musical called Tribal Something, which I had a loose idea of and never got to fully develop. I was trying to finish Tribal Something as a full album of young spoken word poetry and experimental music based heavily on the poly-rhythms and timbres of the peoples of the African Rainforests such as the Bayaka people. I'd hoped that there would be dancing.

This track was meant to express rage. There is a very slight incline of pitch in what could be called the second stanza as I pushed my voice just a little more to the edge of breaking. The cuts that the claves make are meant to cause a hard physical start at intervals, just the same as is the sudden end to the song. I wanted this track to be felt as viscerally as a scream. I wanted it to rattle. I hope that it still does because screaming and wailing and also forward motion, and clearing, and a harsh sweeping away is necessary.

I've kept all of the dusty cassette noise because I think that grit is appropriate.

****this track is also part of "Collective Cry: Riot, Anguish, Lamentation" by Ella Longpre, and was published at Visible Binary, August 2020.

From Ella Longpre:

"This is a collective cry, made from breath, scream, movement, lamentation, song, environment, puncture, dance, silence. Uttered in response to the virus pandemic over this globe, uttered in response to the racism pandemic in this country (Danielle Moodie). A desire to “wail and scream and beat the floor.” Some wrote that they could not channel or conjure any sound, a mournful silence. Some, to be added to the collective recording, I had to hold in my hand, up to a microphone at my chest, thank you for joining this witnessing. Recorded between May 25 - 31, 2020, across the US, on our phones, computers. These testimonies, from our chests."


Read more / Hear more here: www.visiblebinary.com/ella-longpre-collective-cry?fbclid=IwAR1We6wDQGNca7HYhrxMddOF8Afv1cJbGCJmUgfhOTTmsg-ClufiLa2LeSY