Mourning [A] BLKstar are a multi-generational, gender and genre non-conforming amalgam of Black Culture dedicated to servicing the stories and songs of the apocalyptic diaspora. This project is a collective of musicians, writers and multimedia artists formed in Cleveland, Ohio. Working In dialogue with Hip Hop production techniques and live instrumentation, M[A]B serves as witness and testimony to the multiplicity of black people through song...
Their latest record - "The Cycle" - is "bursting forth with industrial synth pop inclinations, jazz-inflected horns and drowsy, late 1990’s influenced beats.Since their formation in 2016, the prolific collective led by producer RA Washington have released three albums that rail against the US’s worst impulses and highlight the African-American experience from their perspective. The Cycle continues in this tradition. Album opener, “If I Can If I May” sets the scene for the Afrofuturist journey we are about to embark on. The sludgy, spaced out synth tones are occasionally interrupted by staccato bursts of horns as the three vocalists speak of the positive power of choosing love. It’s the kind of music made for the frontlines of a protest, a theme that reoccurs throughout the album, notably on the neo-soul groove of “Whom The Bell Tolls” where we are greeted with the affirmation to “Hold on, rise up and stand our ground.” - Stephanie Phillips (THE WIRE)
Dasan Ahanu is an award-winning poet and emcee. He is an Alumni Nasir Jones Fellow of Harvard's Hip Hop Archive and Research Institute, resident artist at the St. Joseph's Historic Foundation/Hayti Heritage Center, and visiting lecturer in the Music Department at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.