Though we weren’t there to see it firsthand, we know a lot about the segregation, discrimination and violence that led Black people to leave the South for other parts of the country during the Great Migration in the middle of the 20th century. We know that those injustices persist today in the forms of systemic racism and police violence. We know that while they exist in plenty of other places besides the South, they haven’t been enshrined in the cultures of other regions like they have here. The legacy of the South has a long, creeping stain on it, but there’s a great deal of history and work — especially the work and cultural contributions of Black people — bound up in it, too.
Among the artists whose home is the South and whose work attempts to reclaim their ownership in its legacy is blues-schooled musician and poet Adia Victoria. In her new single “South Gotta Change,” produced by T Bone Burnett, Victoria stands up in the face of the cultural forces that keep hatred and injustice ingrained in Southern heritage and demands better.
"In 2020 I have watched as the world became irreversibly altered," writes Victoria in a release. "The upheaval COVID-19 caused has allowed for a sacred pause in our daily life. During this lapse we lost Congressman John Lewis. In the days following his death I pondered the work he accomplished and the work left to us who remain. ‘South Gotta Change’ is a prayer, an affirmation, and a battle cry all at once. It is a promise to engage in the kind of ‘good trouble’ John Lewis understood necessary to form a more perfect union. No other place embodies the American experiment with the precision of the South. It is home to both unspeakable horror and unshakable faith. It is up to us, those who are blessed enough to be Southern, to take up the mantle Brother Lewis left us. As the old saying goes, 'As the South goes, so goes the nation.' "
Above, see the music video for the song. The footage includes Victoria and bandmate Mason Hickman working on the song in the studio as well as scenes shot from a car window driving through the countryside and around small towns. There’s footage from around the Tennessee State Capitol as well.
After the song is over, there’s a clip of the Capitol building, over which you can hear Victoria speaking with someone who’s questioning what she’s doing there. On its face, it’s polite, but considering the arrests and allegations of unnecessary force that characterized the recent occupation of the space that protesters dubbed Ida B. Wells Plaza, there’s a chilling undertone.
Find the single on your favorite streaming service via this handy link. Visit Victoria’s website and her social media (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook) for more.
