Moor Mother brings sonic poetry to the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, June 21
Experimental artist inspired by jazz, hip hop, and beat poetry will also play a June 22 show with her quintet Irreversible Entanglements
Moor Mother. Photo by Ebru Yildiz
Coastal Jazz & Blues Society presents SUMAC with Moor Mother as part of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival in association with Queer Arts Festival at Fortune Sound Club on June 21 at 7:30 pm
AFROFUTURISM AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY are at the forefront of poet-musician Moor Mother’s ninth studio album The Great Bailout. Released on March 8, the experimental record is a product of the artist’s research into colonialism and liberation in the U.K., a history of systemic violence that she examines musically through jazz, hip-hop, and beat-poetry influences.
Audiences will get the chance to hear some of those evocative sounds when Moor Mother plays a Fortune Sound Club concert on June 21 as part of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, on a bill headlined by post-metal supergroup SUMAC. Her appearance at the fest is presented in association with the Queer Arts Festival.
Moor Mother’s sound offers a diversity of textures that transcend the ordinary. In songs “ALL THE MONEY” and “LIVERPOOL WINS”, her signature poetic lyrics are delivered in haunting, forceful lilts, while tracks like “GUILTY” with Lonnie Holley and Raia Was show a tender, ethereal side to her talent.
Irreversible Entanglements.
Born Camae Ayewa in Aberdeen, Maryland, Moor Mother is now based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she first moved to pursue photography at the now-closed Art Institute of Philadelphia. She is a founder of the two-member queer, Black, female artist collective Black Quantum Futurism with artist-activist Rasheedah Phillips, and of the American free-jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements.
Guided by Moor Mother’s vocals, quintet Irreversible Entanglements features bassist Luke Stewart, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, and drummer Tcheser Holmes. The punk-inspired group’s rhythmic music leans into improvisational and experimental techniques, with a focus anchored in Black trauma, survival, and power. Irreversible Entanglements will also perform at this year’s Vancouver International Jazz Festival, at Performance Works on June 22 at 7:30 pm.
If two Moor Mother shows weren’t enough, Vancouver audiences can also catch the talented artist later this summer when she opens for former Sonic Youth vocalist Kim Gordon at the Commodore Ballroom on August 30. 
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