Professional People by Fehler Kuti

Allow me to dampen your expectations. This is not the sound of decolonisation. This is no compilation of BLM protest songs. This is no celebration of Black emancipatory struggles. You will not be able to play this at your hip post-pandemic house party. This will not go down well with your woke friends. This is music for the square in the room. For that reluctant BAME/Person of Color who would rather talk about class relations than identities and positionalities. Resist these politics of representation. Shake it like a biometric photograph. Shake off your false consciousness. The Black Diaspora is a transatlantic lie. Embrace this nuanced return to structures and superstructures, to articulations and historical constellations as analytical tools.

Listen to these songs of infrastructure and appraisal of the welfare state. Join me in morning the broken promises of prosperity for all. Send that “Ausländer“ of your mind to heaven. Colonialism fucked you up. Platform Capitalism is keeping you in chains. Are we to unionise all human and non-human workers at amazon? Will modernity always have that „forever nigger“? What about those dispossessed field hands harvesting your asparagus?

All is lost. The system is rigged. Because all histories, gestures and identities have been absorbed into this late capitalist apparatus we call diversity. It can integrate anything and anyone. It made me. It is the price of the ticket. And it is unable to challenge its own premise of an atomised society. As if you and I had so little in common.

They will try and help you. They will build you a museum for your history and an innovation hub for your future. I warn you. Don‘t let them give you a name. Resist appellation. Don’t get that German passport. Don‘t eat asparagus. - Fehler Kuti, Spring 2021