Welcome Cha Wa to the Single Lock family!
On September 4, New Orleans Mardi Gras Indian funk band Cha Wa will release a remix along with a video of their prescient song “Visible Means of Support.” Originally released on Cha Wa‘s Grammy-nominated album Spyboy, the song is based on historical events that reinforce issues raised by the Black Lives Matter movement. “Visible Means of Support” is based on the personal history of racial injustice experienced by Big Chief Joseph “Monk” Boudreaux of the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indians, who co-wrote the song and sings lead on it. Remixed by pioneering 90’s hip-hop sound engineer and producer Bassy Bob Brockmann, the new version is inspired by the BLM movement and early hip hop recordings. Cha Wa’s trombonist Joseph Maize Jr. and Mardi Gras Indian vocalist Joseph Boudreaux Jr. (son of Monk Boudreaux and Second Chief of the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indians) have spiced up the remix with a rap that they developed while performing the song in concert.
LISTEN TO “VISIBLE MEANS OF SUPPORT (NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE REMIX)” NOW!
The song is based on a personal experience of racism by Monk Boudreaux in his youth. He has described the casual cruelty he suffered at the hands of police as a young man during 1950’s Jim Crow-era New Orleans. Monk detailed how the police would arrest him under an archaic law called “no visible means of support,” ostensibly intended to arrest vagrants. Instead the law was used to harass and arrest black people, essentially for being black. The authorities interpreted the law such that an adult who did not have a pay stub as proof of employment on their person gave the police probable cause to to arrest them for loitering. Similar to a modern day “stop and frisk” policy, the law was used as an excuse to intimidate, threaten and detain black folks. Once arrested on this charge Monk would either have to, as the song lyric recounts, “pay the fine or do the time. Twenty dollars or twenty days in jail just because of the color of my skin.”
Monk’s vocal performance on the song is an excellent example of the “testifying” style of singing he has become known for as a modern-day shaman. The hook was sung in the style combining French Creole/Native American Patois “code words” that traditional Mardi Gras Indian music is known for. Inspired by the global protests against police brutality caused by the murder of George Floyd, Cha Wa emulates the call and response version they perform in concert, asking the audience to join along in chanting “No Justice, No Peace” and “Black Lives Matter.”
The video for the song, directed by Jonathan Isaac Jackson, portrays the members of Cha Wa participating in BLM protests in their community along with studio footage of Monk Boudreaux.