Tasked with creating a Moor Mother inspired track using an excerpt from a Howard Zinn speech, I decided not to attempt to recreate her sound one to one. This would feel like missing the point to me, as her sound is very explicitly tied to her identity, of which I can not relate or draw from as influence. Instead, I tried to apply some of the philosophy and production techniques to my own style.
One part of Moor Mother’s work that I personally love is the use of vocal effects on the poem, so I tried doing this on my own track. I added a short gated reverb with a long pre-delay, essentially working as a slapback, to create the ‘topsy turvy’ atmosphere mentioned within the poem.
Most of the synths in my track are created out of the speakers voice by dragging the audio in to a granulizer. This gave each instrument a unique tone and helped to create a cohesivity within the song, as there as a feeling that everything is built around the poem.
I also drew inspiration from the foley used in her tracks, especially in the last 15 seconds. The instrumental switch up at the end of my track, to me, sounds like miners in a big quarry hitting away at their rocks as the poem goes on, reflecting the civil obedience to the state the speaker mentions.
Another technique I pulled from Moor Mother is the use of a sudden tone change by pulling instruments out and in for emphasis. I did this first at around 0:40 when the speaker begins to mention the distractions provided to us that stifle our ability to see the horrors of the world for what they are by having more instruments come in and drown out the vocal a little. The idea is to move the listeners concentration away from the vocals a little to reflect what is being said, before pulling it back and dropping all the instruments and reverb out when she says “…and then come back and look at the world…”. I did this again when she says “We’re going to need to go outside the law” to reflect the fear and immediate reaction many feel to breaking civil obedience as most have had this drilled in to them since birth by dropping out all the instruments and having a low droning sound that feels like a pit in your stomach.
This form of creation was very freeing for me, as I was forced not to think about song structure as verse chorus etc., but by having the music live and breathe and respond to the structure of the pre-recorded poem. This also allowed me to have a good idea of what I’m trying to say with my music before even starting, as usually lyrics come after for me. This meant I could use the instrumentation as part of the message much more than I ever have before and it opened my eyes to the possibilities of delivering a purposeful message through music in a way I have never been able to grasp quite as effectively. Although the track I made was under limited time and does not fully encapsulate the potential of this process of creation, it has opened me up to future possibilities and given me many ideas of how I can incorporate my political beliefs in to the instrumentation of the song, something I have been trying to capture for a long time.