【搬运】【译】叉婊Pitchfork评Jamila Woods 2019年专辑《LEGACY! LEGACY!》
搬运自：微信公众号【评论搬一堆】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）
翻译：ConigliaFolle
校对：Ryan-Chopin
排版：Peter D
When Nina Simone first learned of the church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama that killed four little girls, her immediate reaction was to try to build a gun in her garage for retaliation. After a cooler head prevailed, thanks to her then-husband/manager, she retreated to the den of her home in Mount Vernon, New York and wrote “Mississippi Goddam.” For the next seven years, the civil rights movement guided her artistic compass, and she became an unwavering voice for oppressed people of color everywhere.
当妮娜·西蒙妮(Nina Simone)第一次得知阿拉巴马州伯明翰的教堂爆炸事件导致四个小女孩死亡时，她的第一反应是试图在自己的车库里制造一把枪作为报复。多亏了当时的丈夫兼经纪人，头脑冷静后，她回到纽约芒特弗农(Mount Vernon)的家中，写下了《密西西比戈达姆》(Mississippi Goddam)。在接下来的七年里，民权运动指引着她的艺术方向，她成为了世界各地受压迫的有色人种的坚定代言人。
With LEGACY! LEGACY!, Jamila Woods eagerly takes the reins from pioneers like Simone. On Woods’ 2016 debut HEAVN, her acerbic wit was literally child’s play—transposing the clapping game “Miss Mary Mack” for stark lyrics about police brutality on “VRY BLK,” for example. Those kernels have now ripened on her second album, one that is richer and fuller in every respect. Evocative of Mos Def’s landmark album Black on Both Sides, LEGACY! LEGACY! marries incisive political commentary with deep introspection. The result is an album full of wordplay, anger, and wry humor. Woods returns to us a brazen young artist and woman, keenly aware of the backlash she could face for her transparency.
在《LEGACY! LEGACY!》这张专辑中，Jamila Woods从Simone这样的先锋手中接过了指挥棒。在Woods于2016年发行的出道专辑《HEAVN》中，她尖酸刻薄的语气其实来源于孩童的游戏——将拍手游戏“Miss Mary Mack” 改编成了”VRY BLK”中讽刺政治暴行的歌词。这种内核在她的第二张专辑中已经日臻成熟，在各个方面都更加丰富饱满。与Mos Def饱含回忆的里程碑式专辑《Black on Both Sides》相比，《LEGACY! LEGACY》在富有敏锐政治评论的同时也有着深刻的自省性。最终的产出就是一张充斥着文字游戏、愤怒与扭曲幽默的专辑。在这次回归中，Woods变成了一位厚脸皮的青年女艺术家，杜绝看到自己可能已经过气这一事实。
Each track on LEGACY! LEGACY! highlights a legendary artist of color, spanning disciplines, genres, and decades—Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Frida Kahlo, Miles Davis. For Woods, collectively, they become examples of how to unapologetically navigate life as a person of color. Each song’s subject is treated with the same reverence and warmth as Woods’ own ancestors, who are also referenced throughout. While she assumes responsibility for mining sociopolitical issues in her music, she also stands on the shoulders of these figures in search of her own humanity.
《LEGACY! LEGACY!》中的每一首歌都展现了一位跨越了各种流派、年代以及风格的传奇艺术家的色彩——从Zora Neale Hurston到James Baldwin, Frida Kahlo, Miles Davis。对于Woods来说，这些人是作为有色人种，能够毫无悔意地引领人生的模范。每首歌的主题都同样重要，同样温暖，就像Woods的前辈一样，他们在整张专辑中也被反复提及。当她在自己的音乐中展示出对潜在社会政治问题的关心和责任感时，她也凌驾于那些想要窥探她真实性格的人们之上。
Inspired by the life of trailblazing singer betty Davis, the album’s opener “betty” begins with just three simple chords on the piano—in walks “betty Mabry,” quiet and unassuming, a then-23-year-old girl raised in Pittsburgh. When we meet “Mrs. Miles Davis,” Woods injects bold, rhythmic layers into the track, marking her arrival. She served as Davis’ muse, but taking a backseat role was just not for her. Their turbulent union dissolved after just one year, and not long after, the funk goddess emerged onto the scene. Armed with her newfound independence, Davis would go on to break barriers in rock, R&B, and funk, but she never achieved mainstream success and was often criticized for her hypersexuality. As Woods sings on “betty,” she finds both catharsis and validation for the audacity to be different without compromise: “I am not your typical girl/Throw away that picture in your head,” she declares.
受领军人物betty Davis的启发下，这张专辑的序曲“betty”以三个简单的钢琴和弦开始——伴着安静而笃定的”betty Mabry”，仿佛能看到一位在匹兹堡成长起来的23岁女孩。听到“Mrs. Miles Davis”时，Woods往音轨中插入了大胆且富有节奏感的垫音，宣示了她的来临。她充当了Davis的女神，但是藏在幕后并不适合她自己。他们喧嚣吵闹的结合在仅仅一年之后就分手了，不久后，这位朋克女皇就再次进入了公众视野。带着全新的自信，Davis继续打破摇滚、R&B以及朋克方面的界限，但是她从未获得过主流音乐界的认可，而且也经常被批评为纵欲过度。正像Woods在“betty”中唱的那样，她为自己的情感宣泄以及与众不同和不妥协找到了合适的理由：“我不是一般的女孩/把你头脑里的成见撇掉吧，”她宣告道。
The ways in which black excellence has been continuously jettisoned in America is unending: take Muddy Waters’ first meeting with the Rolling Stones. At the time, Waters was allegedly painting the ceiling of his own record label, Chess, when the British rock stars arrived to record “Satisfaction” during a stop for their first U.S. tour. On “Muddy,” Woods cries out, “They can study my fingers/They can mirror my pose,” over an electric guitar that blares out in protest and anger. She is caught between adoration for her hero, rage over the rampant appropriation of black music, and the understanding that this damage goes beyond repair.
黑人才华被雪藏的情况在美国从未消失：就拿Muddy Water第一次和滚石乐队见面来说吧。当滚石乐队在自己第一次美国巡演中途到他的厂牌要录制”Satisfaction”时，当时Waters正在粉刷自己公司“Chess”的天花板。在歌曲“Muddy”中，Woods伴着电吉他暴怒的反抗大声疾呼，“他们可以研究我的技法/也可以复制我的造型”。她身处对英雄榜样的倾慕、对黑人音乐难以正名的愤怒以及深知这种破坏难以修复的心境之中。
On “Basquiat,” Woods explores how the behavior of an artist of color unfairly becomes fodder for public opinion. She draws inspiration not just from her own run-ins with the media, but chiefly from an interviewer who once asked the renowned artist “what makes him angry,” suggesting that the “rage” seen in his work could be summoned upon command: “These teeth are not employed/You can’t police my joy.” The song simmers along on a jazzy hip-hop groove for nearly seven minutes, peppered by a staccato call-and-response (“Are you mad?/Yes I’m mad”). Tellingly, the song never erupts, and when Woods sings “They wanna see me angry,” she’s sighing, not shouting. Her exhaustion is palpable, resigned to wear the mask that “grins and lies,” as poet Paul Laurence Dunbar once said—the mask that she must wear to quell the seething rage she feels when asked, once again, to explain herself.
在“Basquiat”中，Woods探索了一位有色艺术家的行为举止如何会成为舆论攻击的助燃器。她不仅从和媒体的交集中获得灵感，也从一位记者向一位知名艺术家提问“是什么让他变得愤怒”这件事中获得启发，暗示他作品中的“怒火”是有来由的：“这些唇齿并不负责/你管不着我的欢欣愉悦”。歌曲和爵士风格的hip-hop律动一起持续了将近七分钟，被断断续续的问答点缀（“你疯了吗？/是的我疯了）。但是这首歌整体是叙述性的，并没有爆发的时刻，当Woods唱道“他们想看我生气的样子”时，她在叹气，而不是大喊。她的筋疲力竭是真实可感的，她拒绝戴上“假笑和谎言”的面具，就像诗人Paul Laurence Dunbar曾经说过的——她在被问及的时候不得不戴上面具才能隐藏她心底沸腾的怒火，她再次应用了这个例子，以袒露内心。
In his landmark 1903 essay “The Talented Tenth,” W.E.B. DuBois argued that the liberation of all black people would come from cultivating a handful of exceptional blacks through higher education. Over a century later, black artists and activists, poets and politicians continue to thrive across a spectrum of different mediums. Almost every predecessor conjured in and in-between Woods’ lyrics balanced their craft alongside an unending fight for total equality, whether they wanted to or not: “All the women in me are tired” becomes a running motif throughout the album. With LEGACY! LEGACY!, Jamila Woods positions herself to join the battle, bridging the gap, once and for all, between our unresolved past and the promise that awaits us all on the horizon.
在 W.E.B. DuBois于1903年发表的里程碑式论文 “The Talented Tenth”中，他认为整个黑人种族的解放要等高等教育培养出一些杰出的黑人后才会实现。在一百多年之后，黑人艺术家和社会活动家、诗人和政客们依然通过各种途径奋斗争取自身的权利。不管他们是否自愿，但几乎每位前辈都在Woods的歌词中闪现，并在无尽的平权斗争中施展了自己的魔法：“我身体中的所有女性都已经疲倦了”成为了贯穿整张专辑中的流动主旨。通过《LEGACY! LEGACY!》，Jamila Woods使自己成为斗争中的一员，通过填补年代间的代沟，她彻底地将未解决的过去和即将到来的美好前景相连。
