| The Great Bailout | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | March 8, 2024 | |||
| Genre | Experimental | |||
| Length | 42:34 | |||
| Label | Anti- | |||
| Moor Mother chronology | ||||
| ||||
The Great Bailout is a studio album by American poet and musician Moor Mother. It was released on March 8, 2024, through the record label Anti-.
The Great Bailout is an experimental album that discusses themes of colonialism and slavery in the United Kingdom. In particular, the album examines the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which provided financial compensation to former slave owners but did not provide any such reparations to the newly emancipated people themselves. [1] [2] The record's first song, "Guilty", has been described as a particularly direct response to the financial provisions of the Slavery Abolition Act. [3] "Guilty" introduces the "eerie, cinematic" tone of the album with a layered sound that incorporates string, horn, and vocal parts; [4] the track includes a vocal performance from Lonnie Holley and harp playing from Mary Lattimore. [1]
"All the Money" is an illbient-inspired track [1] [2] that interrogates the means by which the British Empire funded its achievements. [4] On "God Save the Queen", Moor Mother uses sarcastic veneration of the British royal family to critique the ongoing value placed on royalty. [1] [5] The song is built on an instrumental produced by Alex "justmadnice" Farr, which has been described as "deranged anthem-turned-trap" built on "blaring trumpets". [3] "Compensated Emancipation" contrasts gospel- and blues-inspired vocals by Kyle Kidd against a droning, industrial backdrop. [3] [2] Kyle Kidd also contributes vocal performances on "Liverpool Wins", a track that explores how racial discrimination remained embedded in British society even after the abolition of slavery. [5] Additionally, "Liverpool Wins" compares the athletic rivalries between cities to the economic rivalries of competing port cities during the slave trade. [1] The song has been described as a "maniacal"-sounding track that utilizes spoken word delivery rather than "traditional" singing; [6] this characterization was also applied to "Death by Longitude", on which Moor Mother interrogates the Slavery Abolition Act with "aggressive, head-on verses". [1] The album's penultimate song, "South Sea", utilizes the imagery of slave ships to examine historical suffering. It features vocals from the Sistazz of the Nitty Gritty, which have been variously described as singing or moaning, and additional vocal elements such as breaths and gasps. [2] [5]
In an interview with The Guardian , Moor Mother explained why she focused so closely on British history despite being American herself:
I'm not removed from the UK. As an African, our story runs all through the UK. I'm just following the threads. Where we've been. What has happened to us. How we overcome it. [4]
| Aggregate scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 84/100 [7] |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [1] |
| Beats Per Minute | 84/100 [5] |
| Exclaim! | 9/10 [3] |
| The Line of Best Fit | 8/10 [6] |
| Pitchfork | 7.8/10 [2] |
At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, The Great Bailout received an average score of 84 based on 12 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". [7]
The Great Bailout received particular praise for its thematic focus, which led reviewers to describe it as a challenging album that would nevertheless reward attentive listening. [1] [3] Spencer Nafekh-Blanchette of Exclaim! characterized the project as Moor Mother's "most ambitious undertaking yet", [3] and John Amen of Beats Per Minute described it as a confrontational, "unwaveringly polemical" album. [5] Pitchfork 's Boutanya Chokrane stated that, by focusing on slavery within the British Empire, The Great Bailout drew attention to a narrative often overlooked by American audiences. [2] Moor Mother's lyrics have been described as "vivid", [5] "visceral", [1] and "thought-provoking"; [3] critics observed that her delivery utilized "unfathomable sorrow and controlled fury", [2] as well as "bone-chilling solemnity". [6]
The production of The Great Bailout was appraised as being "dense" and "disorienting", with its major elements including "drum machines, jazz horns, and queasy electronic tones". [6] [2] Paul Simpson of AllMusic found the album's sound to be less accessible than Moor Mother's previous two projects. [1] The contrast between the featured artists and the overall bleak mood of the album received critical praise, with reviewers describing the guest artists' contributions as "an act of communal empowerment" that brought "new life" to the album. [6] [3] Lonnie Holley attained particular acclaim for his vocal performance on "Guilty", which Amen argued was potentially his "most heartrending" work. [5] Mary Lattimore's harp performance on the same song was described as showing "masterful" skill. [3]
Elements of "All the Money" and "South Sea" were compared to the films of Jordan Peele. [2] [5]
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Guilty" (with Lonnie Holley and Raia Was) | 9:54 |
| 2. | "All the Money" (with Alya Al Sultani) | 4:12 |
| 3. | "God Save the Queen" (with Sovei) | 3:46 |
| 4. | "Compensated Emancipation" (with Kyle Kidd) | 4:17 |
| 5. | "Death by Longitude" | 5:01 |
| 6. | "My Souls Been Anchored" | 1:13 |
| 7. | "Liverpool Wins" (with Kyle Kidd) | 4:18 |
| 8. | "South Sea" (with Sistazz of the Nitty Gritty) | 9:00 |
| 9. | "Spem in Alium" | 0:53 |
| Total length: | 42:34 | |
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery and liberate slaves around the world.
The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved the transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people, mainly to the Americas. The outfitted European slave ships of the slave trade regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage, and existed from the 16th to the 19th centuries. The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were from Central and West Africa who had been sold by West African slave traders to European slave traders, while others had been captured directly by the slave traders in coastal raids; European slave traders gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas. Except for the Portuguese, European slave traders generally did not participate in the raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa was less than one year during the period of the slave trade. Portuguese coastal raiders found that slave raiding was too costly and often ineffective and opted for established commercial relations.
William Wilberforce was a British politician, a philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, and became an independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Yorkshire (1784–1812). In 1785, he underwent a conversion experience and became an Evangelical Anglican, which resulted in major changes to his lifestyle and a lifelong concern for reform.
Henry Box Brown was a 19th-century Virginia slave who escaped to freedom at the age of 33 by arranging to have himself mailed in a wooden crate in 1849 to abolitionists in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Anti-Slavery International, founded as the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, is an international non-governmental organisation, registered charity and advocacy group, based in the United Kingdom. It is the world's oldest international human rights organisation, and works exclusively against slavery and related abuses.
The Slave Trade Act 1807, officially An Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting the slave trade in the British Empire. Although it did not automatically emancipate those enslaved at the time, it encouraged British action to press other nation states to abolish their own slave trades. It took effect on 1 May 1807, after 18 years of trying to pass an abolition bill.
The Blockade of Africa began in 1808 after the United Kingdom outlawed the Atlantic slave trade, making it illegal for British ships to transport slaves. The Royal Navy immediately established a presence off Africa to enforce the ban, called the West Africa Squadron. Although the ban initially applied only to British ships, Britain negotiated treaties with other countries to give the Royal Navy the right to intercept and search their ships for slaves.
The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in most parts of the British Empire. It was passed by Earl Grey's reforming administration and expanded the jurisdiction of the Slave Trade Act 1807 and made the purchase or ownership of slaves illegal within the British Empire, with the exception of "the Territories in the Possession of the East India Company", Ceylon, and Saint Helena. The Act came into force on 1 August 1834, and was repealed in 1998 as a part of wider rationalisation of English statute law; however, later anti-slavery legislation remains in force.
Moses Roper was an African American abolitionist, author and orator. He wrote an influential narrative of his enslavement in the United States in his Narrative of the Adventures and Escape of Moses Roper from American Slavery and gave thousands of lectures in Great Britain and Ireland to inform the European public about the brutality of American slavery.
Allison Moorer is an American country singer-songwriter. She signed with MCA Nashville in 1997 and made her debut on the U.S. Billboard Country Chart with the release of her debut single, "A Soft Place to Fall", which she co-wrote with Gwil Owen. The song was featured in Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1999. Moorer performed at the Oscars ceremony the same year. She has made ten albums and her songs have been recorded by Trisha Yearwood, Kenny Chesney, Miranda Lambert, Steve Earle, and Hayes Carll.
The Slave Ship, originally titled Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhon coming on, is a painting by the British artist J. M. W. Turner, first exhibited at The Royal Academy of Arts in 1840.
Slavery at common law in the British Empire developed slowly over centuries, and was characterised by inconsistent decisions and varying rationales for the treatment of slavery, the slave trade, and the rights of slaves and slave owners. Unlike in its colonies, within the home islands of Britain, until 1807, except for statutes facilitating and taxing the international slave trade, there was virtually no legislative intervention in relation to slaves as property, and accordingly the common law had something of a "free hand" to develop, untrammelled by the "paralysing hand of the Parliamentary draftsmen". Two attempts to pass a slave code via Parliament itself both failed, one in the 1660s and the other in 1674.
The International Slavery Museum is a museum located in Liverpool, UK, that focuses on the history and legacy of the transatlantic slave trade. The museum which forms part of the Merseyside Maritime Museum, consists of three main galleries which focus on the lives of people in West Africa, their eventual enslavement, and their continued fight for freedom. Additionally the museum discusses slavery in the modern day as well as topics on racism and discrimination.
Slavery in Britain existed before the Roman occupation and until the 11th century, when the Norman conquest of England resulted in the gradual merger of the pre-conquest institution of slavery into serfdom, and all slaves were no longer recognised separately in English law or custom. By the middle of the 12th century, the institution of slavery as it had existed prior to the Norman conquest had fully disappeared, but other forms of unfree servitude continued for some centuries.
When the Dutch and Swedes established colonies in the Delaware Valley of what is now Pennsylvania, in North America, they quickly imported enslaved Africans for labor; the Dutch also transported them south from their colony of New Netherland. Enslavement was documented in this area as early as 1639. William Penn and the colonists who settled in Pennsylvania tolerated slavery. Still, the English Quakers and later German immigrants were among the first to speak out against it. Many colonial Methodists and Baptists also opposed it on religious grounds. During the Great Awakening of the late 18th century, their preachers urged slaveholders to free their slaves. High British tariffs in the 18th century discouraged the importation of additional slaves, and encouraged the use of white indentured servants and free labor.
Slavery in Ethiopia existed for centuries, going as far back as 1495 BC and ending in 1942. There are also sources indicating the export of slaves from the Aksumite Empire. The practice formed an integral part of Ethiopian society. Slaves were traditionally drawn from the Nilotic groups inhabiting Ethiopia's southern hinterland and Oromos. War captives were another source of slaves, though the perception, treatment and duties of these prisoners was markedly different. Although religious law banned Christian slave masters from taking part in the slave trade, many Muslim Ethiopian slave traders took part in the Arab slave trade. Slaves usually served as concubines, bodyguards, servants and treasurers.
Slavery in South Africa existed from 1653 in the Dutch Cape Colony until the abolition of slavery in the British Cape Colony on 1 January 1834. This followed the British banning the trade of slaves between colonies in 1807, with their emancipation by 1834. Beyond legal abolition, slavery continued in the Transvaal though a system of inboekstelsel.
The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, formerly the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership, is a research centre of University College, London (UCL) that focuses on revealing the impact of British slavery and, in particular, the implications of the Slave Compensation Act 1837. The Centre's work is freely available online to the public through the Legacies of British Slavery database.
Kiss My Super Bowl Ring is the fourth studio album by American experimental rock duo The Garden. The album was released on March 13, 2020 through Epitaph Records.
Oh Me Oh My is the 2023 studio album by American experimental musician and visual artist Lonnie Holley. It received positive reviews from critics.