Moor Mother

Moor Mother

Moor Mother is the solo project of Camae Ayewa, a Philadelphia-born musician, poet, visual artist and professor of composition at the USC Thornton School of Music. Her work spans hip hop, electronic music, free jazz and classical music, and she also works as an educator, coach and social activist.

Background and artistic practice

Ayewa creates music, writing, film, visual art, socially engaged art and creative research, often using field recordings and archival sound collage to build layered soundscapes. Her work focuses on social issues, historical memory and alternative ways of understanding time, and it combines practical concerns with speculation and historical concepts. In the solo music project, she uses intense spoken-word poetry and heavy electronic textures, with influences from punk, hip hop, jazz and soul.

Groups and collaborations

She co-founds the Black Quantum Futurism artistic and literary collective. She is a member of Irreversible Entanglements and one-half of the experimental club duo 700 Bliss. The verified facts also identify Moor Jewelry as a related membership.

Recordings

Moor Mother first gains wider attention with Fetish Bones in 2016. Her later albums include Circuit City in 2020, which features charged spoken-word lyrics and free jazz instrumentation, and Black Encyclopedia of the Air in 2021, which is more atmospheric but remains confrontational. The Great Bailout in 2024 turns to the history and lasting effects of British colonialism.

Performances and recognition

Ayewa’s work appears at the Guggenheim Museum, The Met, Carnegie Mellon, Carnegie Hall, Documenta 15, the Berlin Jazz Festival and the Glastonbury Festival. She is a Pew Fellow, a The Kitchen Inaugural Emerging Artist Awardee, a Leeway Transformation Award recipient, a Blade of Grass Fellow with Black Quantum Futurism, and a Rad Girls Philly Artist of the Year. She also takes part in artist residencies at West Philadelphia Neighborhood Time Exchange, WORM! Rotterdam and the Creative Capital and CERN collide residency with Black Quantum Futurism.