Philadelphia native Camae Ayewa has characterized her activist sound project Moor Mother with various self-coined, hybrid genres: "project housing bop"; "chill step"; "blk girlblues"; "witch rap"; "coffee shop riot gurl songs"; "southern girl dittys"; "black ghost songs."

Her music, most recently the widely lauded album Fetish Bones, serves as a vessel for confronting a history of struggle and loss and as a call for rebellion and endurance in the American black community. Via the album, she departs on an investigation and reportage of history “throughout the race riots from 1866 to the present time,” visiting specific moments, bearing angry witness, and taking on the cumulative weight of centuries of hardship. Ayewa’s practice reflects an understanding of afrofuturism as a revisitation of the past and an acknowledgement of the present as its own sci-fi reality. In this artist talk she will speak with Emily Bick of The Wire.  

Presented by the Wire.