SOUND

“I speak with a stutter, I am Black, and I am a musician”, JJJJJerome Ellis explains himself at the beginning of the piece Jede Krankheit ist ein musikalisches Problem, which can be heard on the new album The Clearing. As the US composer and author sees music as a means to transform time, subversive music must undermine established notions of it. His songs are composed of hip-hop, jazz, and house fragments, a tireless appropriation of Black music, but interspersed and disjointed with lyrics that address the discontinuous and stuttering in Black lore. The congruity of tradition is defined by white hegemony, says JJJJJerome Ellis. His music reveals that congruity has always been a myth and not a hegemony that lasts.

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