Root Cause by Cleo Reed

“Root Cause,” my very first album project.

I’ve experienced many timelines collapsing on top of me—often seen as an “old soul” or “sentient” child, I found myself reliving the pasts of my ancestors through dreams and physical contact with their ephemera.

“ELLA” is my born name, and always rang an older tune. So “CLEO,” a name my great-grandmother had, gave me true comfort as I began to address intergenerational trauma, sacrifices, and observations in my work at 18, 19, and 20 years old. I dedicate this first work to her, and her son, Pops Stewart, a blues musician from Texas.

NOTE: This is BLACK work, FEMME work, QUEER work. I’ll take you through a series of performances that guide you through what I feel being observed/objectified/assessed in this life I’ve lived.

This is not a tender album, but this portrait is gentle; a vision I had that pulls from the roots of my childhood in NYC and the American South.

These songs are pained but there’s love in the truth they carry. I am inspired by the Harlem Renaissance, and on a journey to recollect the stages we ought to use to tell tales that fall outside of the affluent, outside of the stark, and outside of the gaze that came once industry came to be in this country.

Ella Moore performs under the alias “Cleo Reed,” modeled after two ancestors. Born and raised in NYC and Uptown DC, Cleo creates under the musical influence of black underground sounds.

mgmt: matt@not97.com