OUT THE MUD

Most the time, when you born Black in America, you don’t have the same rights. For many, it’s even harder, you might not even survive.

As I heard growing up, “Get It Out The Mud” *

From birth, diggin out the mud, working to get it how you can with little to no help. Most the time, mud pulls you down, so you got adversity all around you. Constant weight.

It’s survival until you finally out the mud.

For this debut solo, b. Robert Moore, lays out his experience as a Black American, in the perspective of a linear Rite of Passage. As his experiences, and as a Black community in America.

In many African societies, art plays an important role in various rites of passage throughout the cycle of life. These rituals mark an individual’s transition from one stage of life to another. The birth of a child, a youth’s coming of age, and the funeral of a respected elder are all events in which an individual undergoes a change of status. During these transitional periods, individuals are considered to be especially vulnerable to spiritual forces. Art objects are therefore created and employed to assist in the rite of passage and to reinforce community values.**

A Rite of Passage can be different depending on culture, tribe, region, etc.; however, it’s understood generally as important life events as you cycle through stages of “life” and or after life.

For many Black Americans, we have no direct understanding of our traditional African tribes rite of passage. Our only Rite Of Passage is what we have inherited being born descendants of African slaves here in America. For many, birth and childhood are traumatic, coming of age is a form of warfare (if we even survive), conditioned to not understand martial structure, religious confusion through manipulation, death…. And more.

In hopes that our coming of Age, our Rite of Passage, is to make it past the age of 25….

If we do, some of us may even thrive. We may even find a smile. We may recreate. We may be the rose that grew from concrete.