Political R&B

“Before they lay your body down / you got to change the world before you six feet under the ground.”

Martin Luther King Jnr. and Malcolm X.

Singer Novel takes R&B back to its political roots in the song and music video for “Body Down.” Sample lyric: “Before they lay your body down / you got to change the world before you six feet under the ground.”

The music video references Malcolm X and Martin Luther King as it points to the part-political roots of this musical genre in the 1960s.

“Body Down” is a remix of an indie pop song by English singer Jack Peñate.  In Novel’s hands–aided by the video–it becomes a comment on violence  (police brutality, gun violence, assassinations, Islamophobia, militarism, etcetera). Troy Davis’ execution also makes it into the video.

As one Youtube viewer commented: “… this song makes me want answers to questions that the government refuses to answer or even acknowledge.”

Remix culture  sometimes has its benefits.

Watch.

Via Eddie STATS Houghton

Further Reading

And do not hinder them

We hardly think of children as agents of change. At the height of 1980s apartheid repression in South Africa, a group of activists did and gave them the tool of print.

The new antisemitism?

Stripped of its veneer of nuance, Noah Feldman’s essay in ‘Time’ is another attempt to silence opponents of the Israeli state by smearing them as anti-Jewish racists.