Moor Mother is an American musician, poet and activist who is well known for her very political songs which birthed genres such as Afrofuturism. The song GOD SAVE THE QUEEN comes of the album The Great Bailout, which is an album describing “the knotty relationship between Europe and Africa” according to Pitchfork. The project came about when Moor Mother was asked to create a theme with an orchestra for the Tusk Festival. When talking to Walker, she states: “At that moment, when I was thinking what I could do, I felt it was imperative to focus on a historical moment that still has its residue, or remnants, here in the present.”
When talking to The Guardian, Moor Mother says: “As an African, our story runs all through the UK. I’m following the threads: what has happened to us, how we have to overcome it.” This theming of the UK can be seen prevalently in the song GOD SAVE THE QUEEN from the title alone, since it recycles the British national anthem however the Queen had been dead for over 2 years by the release of this album.
On this spoken word song mixing jazz and experimental drums, Moor Mother speaks about the Queen’s controversial past. RA describes the song as a “satirical plea for the safety of the Queen and all her stolen riches.” Lyrics such as “God save the Queen, because who else’s life has value,” and “Has her plantations been saved, Oh, God, thank you, God,” show this very ironic view of the royals, clearly showing how – according to The Daily Campus – Moor mother is “critiquing the institution of royalty and how, to some, their lives are more valued than others.”
The instrumental itself is very trance-like, as if to represent how a large chunk of the UK populations sees the Queen, almost as if they are hypnotised into forgetting her past and worshipping her as a god. RA says that the “discordant chords, trap percussion and spiralling sax culminate into a nightmarish version of the [British] anthem.”
Leave a Reply