Moodymann is a fixture of Detroit’s towering genealogy of electronic music pioneers. A complicated figure, Moodymann rarely ever agrees to being photographed or interviewed.
Yet what pierced this deliberate anonymity in 2019 was a damning video that shocked fans around the worked. Parked outside his own property in Highland Park, Detroit, a video shows Moodymann threatened at gunpoint by several police officers. It’s worth lingering for a moment on the spectacular title track, “Taken Away.” Sampling from Roberta Flack’s 1971 “Sunday and Sister Jones,” Moodymann breaks apart the lyrics then pieces them back together in a mosaic, stringing the chorus, “She said, take him away/I don’t wanna live.” Aided by a funk bass line and harmonica riff, this crooning elegy is replete with drama and grief. In the middle of the song, an ambient pause perhaps illustrates the moment when someone takes their final breaths. Police sirens, echoing chords, and white noise intensify in a steep crescendo, leading us to a precipice of silence. Then, the song resumes its original house beat as if there was no interruption.
Nothing changed about being Black in America in 2020. Only that the callousness with which our society responds is thawing as Black America’s exhaustion grows deeper. Moodymann samples from R&B and pop songs in economical, poetic ways, often reshuffling key lyrics to bend songs to his will. Al Green’s soulful and ecstatic “Love and Happiness” is transformed in “Do Wrong,” a song about the bitterness of infidelity. With lyrics bordering on misogynistic, such as the threatening, “you better find a way to love me…cause if you don’t, somebody else will,” it is noticeable on this album the way Moodymann sees women as carrying both the burden of tremendous grief, and men’s sexual desires as expectation.
Apart from the solemnity of “Taken Away” and “Do Wrong,” there are plenty of funky, groovy, tracks to dance to on this album, such as “I’m Already Hi,” “Just Stay a While,” and “I Need Another __.” For February’s Black History Month, this album is undoubtedly one to play on repeat and digest at least a few times. Listen/support here:
-Lina Xing
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