New video! Here’s the official blurb:
Guante & Katrah-Quey’s “Our Relationship is a Slowly Gentrifying Neighborhood” features singer (and constant presence at Twin Cities rallies and marches) Jayanthi Kyle lamenting the deeply personal loss of something that used to mean something. While using the standard structure of a love song, the track attempts to explore the human side of an issue that, for too many, is an abstraction, or “someone else’s problem,” if it’s considered a problem at all.
The song exemplifies the philosophy of “Post-Post-Race,” an album attempting to grapple with issues of race, racism and solidarity by pushing beyond platitudes and asking deeper, more challenging questions. Over Katrah-Quey’s lush, vibrant production, Guante (along with an impressive roster of guests) reaches for root causes, explores his own complicity in the system, and tries to find pathways to action.
The full album is available here
(a portion of the proceeds benefits Twin Cities youth arts/activism organization TruArtSpeaks).
The video is directed by E.G. Bailey, fresh off appearances at the Tampere Film Festival, Riga International Film Festival, and Sundance Film Festival, where his short film, “New Neighbors,” was selected from tens of thousands of entries. Bailey (along with co-producer Sha Cage) was also responsible for Guante’s move to Minneapolis back in 2007, so this video represents coming full-circle, and affirming that community comes first. Full credits:
- Director: E.G. Bailey
- Cinematographer: Anton Shavlik
- Producers: E.G.Bailey & Sha Cage
- Editors: E.G. Bailey & Anton Shavlik
- Costume Design: Trevor Bowen
- First Assistant Director: Sha Cage
- First Assistant Camera: Casey Bargsten
- Production Assistant: Autumn Compton
- Colorist: Anton Shavlik
- Storyboard Artist: Cecilia Hsu
- Titles: Eroll Bilibani
- a Freeztyle film
FULL LYRICS:
Our Relationship is a Slowly Gentrifying Neighborhood
(words by Guante; music by Katrah-Quey; guest vocals by Jayanthi Kyle)
I don’t recognize this place anymore
Grew up around the corner, before these lines and borders
but I don’t recognize this place anymore
I ain’t afraid of ghosts
I grew up in a place where they’re takin’ over slow
like death isn’t always the fading of a soul
progress isn’t always related to growth
The first step in building a skyscraper
is digging up a very deep hole…
you ever seen a city melt into a shadow of itself?
you ever feel like there’s a lack of all the magic that we felt
split an atom or a cell like it’s progress
like destruction and creation are the same process
yeah, and our relationship
just ain’t been the same since the chains moved in
I still remember when
I felt like a million bucks, wasn’t worth a cent
your heart is still the only place I want to live
I just can’t afford the rent
I don’t recognize this place anymore
it’s just a big blank canvas, after all this color’s been banished
I don’t recognize this place anymore
I ain’t afraid of ghosts
a house can’t be haunted if it never had a soul
but tell me what happens when that house gets sold?
does a spirit shiver stuck out in the cold?
so this is how the world ends? a casual exorcism
the closing of a story dressed up as the beginning, what’s the limit?
here’s to the history we lived in
here’s to the years we were able to resist this
here’s to acid rain as it falls
enveloped in each other as umbrellas dissolve
you’ll caress my skin and I’ll peel it off
until we’re nothin’ but our hearts underneath it all
and then we’ll sell ‘em to developers for cheap and fall
deeply asleep as the concrete just crawls
over the whole earth ‘til all of a sudden
you got this look like a cop sayin’ “you lost or something?”
I don’t recognize this place anymore
so I’ll leave for the last time, and treat every memory as a landmine
‘cause I don’t recognize this place anymore