SOUNDTRACK: MUMU FRESH Feat. Black Thought & DJ Dummy-Tiny Desk Concert #765 (July 11, 2018).
I recognized Mumu Fresh from when she appeared at a Tiny Desk with August Greene a few months ago. Mumu Fresh was a true highlight of that show–her rap was political and personal and powerful.
Here she’s got her own concert (and DJ Dummy is back with her for this as well).
A regal combination of black power and Native American pride, Mumu Fresh — also known by her birth name Maimouna Youssef — is an abundantly gifted singer and emcee who prances between genres and styles. The Baltimore native fuses her rich multi-octave range and ferocious rap delivery with spiritually inclined lyrics so potent and mindful they precipitated a wellspring of emotion throughout the room.
Mumu began her own Tiny Desk in her native Lakota tongue with “Ink Pata,” signaling a call to prayer in a sacred ritual. Looped tribal chants of her own harmonies set the mood as delivered a stirring spoken word performance that journeyed through her ancestral lineage to the struggles of the present day.
Her looping is outstanding–she harmonized with herself perfectly. After a minute and a half she speak/raps/reads a lengthy piece that is really powerful.
With a buoyant and thoughtful spirit, Mumu and her band transitioned into the classic-sounding “Miracles” from Vintage Babies, her collaborative album with group mate DJ Dummy. Declaring it a celebration of soul music, she mixed sweet tender melodies with lyrics to empower those devoid of hope.
She introduces “Miracles” by saying, we are always waiting for something to happen. But what if your miracle is waiting for you to be prepared: “the teacher arrives when the student is ready.” It was great having live strings on this track: Chelsey Green (violin), Monique Brooks-Roberts (violin), Kevin Jones (cello) and the backing singers (Amber Harmon) gave an excellent soul sound.
This song segued into the awesome “Work in Progress.” Accented by the feel-good chords of The Roots keyboardist Ray Angry, and Chris Dave (drums) and Romier Mendez (bass), Mumu speaks t he truth. With some of my favorite lyrics:
I wanna be a good role model to girls coming after
but sometimes I slip up and say some shit that’s wretched
Forgive me, I’m a work in progressI don’t give a fuck about what you’re saying to me.
If I’m too big for my britches then give me a sheet.
I need room to grow I’m still figuring it out,
If you say you ain’t, you lying–what you talking about?
and my personal favorite
I’ve been through so much shit I’m surprised I’m still standing
so every time I see a mirror I pose dammit!
The set concludes with a new version of “Say My Name,” a song Mumu wrote about Sandra Bland, who died in police custody in 2015, and the impact it had on her. Starting off with a 1950s doo-wop circle, she blends traditional soul elements with politically relevant lyrics.
It opens with doo wop vocals and lovely pizzicato strings:
If I should die tomorrow at the hands of the policeman
and the papers say, hey, we’re going to call it as suicide
would you even question why?We watched a woman get drug out and beaten
filmed on a highway
and all y’all could say was black women too mouthy
I’m vexed searching my timeline
See if people find time to criticize and villainize, call that shit a suicide.
What if Sandra Bland was your child
…
Audacity of hope
to believe you can succeed when everybody and their momma say no
Well fuck y’all. I’m different descendant of the fittest
I’ve been reincarnated just so i can handle business.
Black Thought comes out for a final verse, but it’s hard to hold a candle to what Mumu just laid down. His flow is great though. And she even tacks on an extra verse after the credits.
[READ: February 1, 2018] “The Requirement”
I rather enjoyed this simple story, told simply. It begins with the narrator talking about how when you get older, you lose people. You don’t care about people who have died until people your own age start leaving.
He says that when people who mattered to him died, he began to feel something was required of him. If he could do it, he did, but sometimes he didn’t know what the requirement was.
When his good friend Bog Ellis got sick he felt a requirement but had no idea what it could be or how to do it.
She tells us some great Big Ellis stories.
Big was indeed Big and quite stout. He was also remarkably strong. But he was mostly just kind of chill (or whatever you would call such a person back in 1970).
He and Big went to a dance in the next town. They knew no one. They had a great time. Big was dancing with a similarly big girl–well-matched to him. He and Big had each bought some whiskey to bring with them. When the girl leaned up against him and felt the whiskey in his jacket pocket she mistook it for a gun–John Dillinger was loose at the time. And within minutes word spread that Dillinger himself was in the room. They had a good laugh at that.
Another amusing story came when the narrator borrowed Big’s shoes to go to a different dance. Big didn’t know about the dance and he was sleeping so he didn’t mind. The narrator brought the shoes back to their original location but they looked far worse for wear Big didn’t get mad very often and when he saw his shoes he said “Well, shoes! I don’t know where you been, but looks like you had a good time.”
You couldn’t make him mad but he could be irritating in his own way. He married Annie May and she used t o get mad about his stubborn stupid ways. They let their farm sag around them, it was comfortable ad broken in. And that kind of not-in-a-hurry attitude also came upon him when he was sick.
He lingered, slowly getting weaker and weaker. When the narrator went to see him for perhaps the last time, it was actually Big Ellis who wound up doing something nice for the narrator. How could he possible fulfill this requirement?
I Just Read About That... 
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