“Only in America” ​​by Matthew E. White: For All Those Killed – Culture

For example Walter Scott. Shot from behind while running from a police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina. The officer had stopped Scott because of a malfunctioning brake light. He shot eight times. Five bullets hit.

For example Philando Castile. Different tail light, same madness. Killed in front of his girlfriend and her daughter – at a traffic stop. Authorities released the video themselves, shortly after acquitting the officer, who panics when Castile tells him he has a gun (and the permit to go with it). It takes seven seconds for the policeman to draw his own gun and fire it seven times into Castile’s body.

For example Sandra Bland. For example Stephen Clark. For example Freddie Gray, Michael Brown, Botham Jean, Corey Jones. They all have Wikipedia entries describing their deaths as a result of racism, fear, overreaction, lack of education, or blunt hatred. And has them all Matthew E. White, the fantastic neo-soul singer, unfortunately much too unknown, at least in this countryproducer and multi-instrumentalist from Richmond, Virginia, now has an album dedicated to him.

The USA – the country where everyone knows how to tie a hangman’s knot

More like an 18 minute suite. “Only in America” ​​is her name, with a bit of a sarcastic scuffle, and she begins with a beautifully pompous “Prelude”. Flattering on the violin, sweet on the flute, very gentle brass and thus a fine contrast to the text: “We’ve done our best to turn our back, learned by heart the ways to tie a noose / Even I heard how, and I was born in 1982 .” We really turned away with all our might and passionately learned how to tie hangman’s knots. Even he, White, knows how to do it – and he was born in 1982.

Then it’s about him american dream, whose song wafts through the South – “Blood on the hands and blood on the mouth”. The USA also has its own history when it comes to processing hatred in music. police brutality is not just everyday life in (black) America, it is part of people’s identity, if not even their DNA. That’s why the The history of police violence is also written so deeply into the music.

For example, “Bitter Fruit,” which Abel Meeropol wrote and set to music in 1937, and which jazz singer Billie Holliday recorded two years later as “Strange Fruit.” Strange fruit hangs from poplar trees, swaying in the “southern breeze” and drenching the leaves and roots in blood in this sultry, claustrophobic song about the lynchings of black people.

Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” for example. And later, of course, rap: in 1988 the group released the single “Fuck tha Police”. NWA, who founded the genre of gangsta rap in Compton, a black neighborhood in south Los Angeles. A few years later, New York’s KRS One came full circle with his song “Sound of the Police,” in which he used the two words “officer” (police officer) and “overseer” (as the guards on the slave master’s plantations were called). ) merged phonetically.

On “Only in America”, which also has a Short film by visual artist Hampton Boyer gives, the part of the disturbing takes the artist Lonnie Holley. The 72-year-old’s main job is creating sculptures from rubbish, which he collects in his hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. When he was four, the woman who had informally adopted him reportedly traded him for a bottle of whiskey. The portal pitch fork once wrote that he collects our ugliest, most obscure objects “and transforms them into unique reflections on our troubled world”. That goes quite well.

Here Holley is the street-weary panic messenger. Glaring, spotlighted news madness: “Did you see what happened in the hood”, “What the hell / What the hell”, “Only in America do I see my grandparents cry”.

Open detailed view

Then everything floats away in a gently dissonant, organ-like outro: “When the curtains of this night are peeled back / And it’s clear what we threw on the pyre,” whispers White, very softly, but that makes it all the more poisonous to the conscience, ” we will shout for forgiveness / For all bearing witness / Or flagrantly fanning the fire”. When the realization comes in the morning of what we threw on the pyre under the cover of night, we will beg for forgiveness. We all knew it – or fanned it in a relaxed manner.

And then, as if to quickly capture the pathos again, the dedication. “This song’s for Walter Scott / This song’s for Emmett Till / This song’s for Philando Castile / This song’s for Sandra Bland, Stephon Clark and Freddie Gray.”