Today, Saul Williams has released “Robot Slave” and “Mazahua” (feat. Aztlan Underground), which are the two new singles from his forthcoming album, Leap Life, that will be on August 28, through Big Dada. “Robot Slave” is one of the project’s standout tracks, which begins by exploring the etymology of the word “robot,” which originally referred to forced labor and servitude. “The fears and dreams of the colonizer are forever intertwined,” states Williams. “Education was denied to enslaved Africans for fear that they might learn too much and rebel. When the word ‘robot’ first appeared in the early 1900’s, it also meant ‘forced labor’ or ‘slave,’ and a dream of a class of bioengineered workers that would handle (white) humanity’s menial tasks. Of course this dream also came coupled with the fear that, if not careful, the robot could also learn too much and rebel. In this song I weigh the possibility of communicating with our ancestors whose land and fossils power our technology and how they might aid us in our revolt”
As for “Mazahua”, Williams layers spoken reflections with indigenous instrumentation and vocals from Aztlan Underground’s Yaotl. The track becomes an act of convergence: different histories, geographies and cosmologies braided into single space. “The text of ‘Mazahua’ was written on the day that the ceasefire in Gaza was announced,” says Williams. “Yaotl, from Aztlan Underground, is singing ‘We are the people’ in Mazahua, one of the indigenous languages of Turtle Island. The connection between indigenous struggles in Palestine, the occupied US and Canada and all colonized lands are connected through systems that thrive off of our death, displacement, and the extraction of our resources, i.e.: racial capitalism. In playing my part in our mobilization against oppressive systems, music is my weapon of choice.”
Photo Credit: Marissa Rose Ficara
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