Exquisite, soaring lead vocals and harmonies from the Barbadas-born, LA-based soulful singer-songwriter on this acoustic new track that captures the traumas and experience of being a black woman. Ayoni explains it this way:
“‘Unmoved’ is the most vulnerable I’ve ever been about my experience existing as a Black woman in this world. I recorded, produced, and mixed this in early June 2020 at a time when the conversation about Black women’s erasure, exploitation, and disrespect in this world, in our industries, and in our own movements is finally being acknowledged. We are the unseen and unheard too often, yet it is for those reasons that I dare to be unmovable in my resistance and resilience. This is not to be romanticised in a world where self love is an act of defiance. But to endure, to be joyous, to be liberated, to know a positive peace is the most defiant and revolutionary choice we have.”
Sill only 20, but with astonishing maturity, Ayoni released an album, Iridescent, in 2019. More of her music can be found here.
I’ll leave the way I came
Unseen, unheard, unmoved
A Black woman truth
Four years old too Black to play
My first crush showed me all the right shades for his love
And it brands you
You get a new leader and think you know trauma
I’m 20 years of breakdowns and mantras
Spare me the shock in looking at yourselves
It scares me there’s shock I could love myself
How I do
Oh
Cry in the bathroom
But they’ll never have you
It’s always been bigger than this
And I fucking swear I swear down
That we love ourselves politically
It’s rebellious
Are you sitting comfortable
While we bleed in vain
I’ve died by other names
Please make me feel you care my ally
But are you prepared to
To lose your sleep
To bare your teeth
To break like me
Cry in the bathroom
But they’ll never have you
It’s always been bigger than this
And I fucking swear I swear down
That we love ourselves politically
It’s rebellious
I’ll leave the way I came
Unseen, unheard, unmoved
A Black woman truth
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