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This is a really fresh and fun song with a hook in Mandarin and the rest in English, sung by Nigerian singer Brazy. It’s really cool to hear Chinese language and culture find its way into a fun dance track like this.
Music
Music
Woman is a Word (2016) – Empress of
Wow, this 8-year-old song I’m hearing for the first time gave me lots of inspiration today. The lyrics are so intellectual and demanding, the way she repeats them emphatically, starting with the assertion, “I’m only an image of what you see.”
The song builds with a delightful steel drum melody and becomes sensual and proudly womanly before transforming into more of a house instrumental. For the second verse, empress begins to chant “I’m only a struggle if I’m in your way”… “But you made the road one-way,” capturing a really common feeling we meet when struggling for justice.
Often, the blame gets shifted to the victims of oppression when they make their everyday struggles known to the people who built the system for themselves. In this song, Empress captures how those who built up the patriarchy made it for themselves then get mad when there’s not room for everyone, just like building a one-way road.
Empress of does a great job with this song, celebrating the struggle against patriarchy.
Sweet Honey in the Rock – Ella’s Song (1980)
In this performance, Sweet Honey in the Rock were supporting the international labor movement and pan-Africanism. They were an acapella group that were using only their bodies to create beauty, cooperatively and with humanity. By embracing the pan-African movement, they show their support for the de-colonial struggle.
Strike – Summer Of Haze · CHERNOBURKV (2021)
This song (and the entire album, “48 x 84”) is a bombardment of witch house that shows us the emotional chaos 2021 will surely bring.
The industrial crashes and grating sounds underlying frantic yet confident female vocal tracks is the breath of fresh toxic air we need musically right now.
Kamelemba – Oumou Sangaré (2017)
For a brief history and background of Wassoulou Music and the legendary Oumou Sangaré, check out this Pitchfork song review.
I loved the feminist elements of the storytelling in this song—true to form for Oumou Sangaré. However, the contemporary choreography is what kept me fascinated.
Manifest – Andrew Bird (2019)
This song and music video feel cathartic, like a breath of reality in the lie we tell ourselves as US citizens. The lyrics are a bit abstract, but it definitely has elements of confronting climate denial, radical politics, and US colonialism.
The name “Manifest” refers to the white supremacist idea of Manifest Destiny that fueled colonialism and genocide in the early days of the US. Hopefully, we can push for a cultural shift that finally dispels that sentiment.
If you enjoy this song, you might like the full album! It’s pretty beautiful and intelligent. It’s been nearly 2 years, and I’m still unpacking some of the lyrics!
Guerra – Residente (2017)
In this stunning music video, the acclaimed globe-trotting musician and activist Residente captures the graphic depravity of war. This video came out around the same time as the mannequin challenge, so it felt like a very poignant comparison being made between the blissful fun lives of western youth and the painful lives of the brown children who suffer as a result of western nations’ histories of plundering.