Sedition Ensemble - Regeneration Report (1982)

Am distracting myself today by trawling through lesser-known No Wave records.  A curious genre, No Wave.  You get wacky people with saxophones, you get marimba bands who you're not sure if they're trying to imitate Frank Zappa or Starbuck or both.  And then you get this, fierce Black revolutionary music.  It was pretty marginal, and I know why.  I know that even when married to absolute fire grooves, listening to a record talking about not just the history but the continuing _present_ of white oppression of Black lives rubs white people the wrong way.  That's my instinct, sure, to say "I know all this!  You don't have to tell me!"

But if they don't have to tell me, why is it still happening?  It's a testament, really, a testament to saying these things every way.  Singing statistics about the carceral state over a smoky blues vamp, sure, maybe it brings to mind "The Most Unwanted Music" a little.  Because these are truths that white people don't want to hear.  There isn't any good way to say these things, any way of saying it that won't make white people defensive, argumentative, full of excuses.

Look, I don't care if you listen to this record or not.  The stuff they're saying here, though - it was true in 1982, it's true in 2020, and it needs to be said.