Defforest Brown Jr’s art and expression is presented as the amalgamation of years of living in a systemically capitalist, racist and power hungry America.
In the piece Amerikkkas Bay, Brown uses a very minimal, dark undertone to enhance vocals talking about police brutality and violence. A stinging prose of injustice – forming the very pillars of Dafforests music. Browns music seems to emit the dark struggle of trying to live in a society and urban environment so unfamiliar as a person of colour. There is a clear expression of rhythm and soul as a presentation of of generational trauma, cutting past constructed frameworks of Western music and thoughts and ideologies.
The systematic displacement of Black communities mixed with a linear consideration of Black music (from blues to rock to jazz to soul to funk to techno) displays communication emerging from a people trying to learn to speak the way they would like to whilst also being set within restrictive societal dimensions .
the idea of people of colour engaging with White technologies powered by broken European ideologies shows strongly throughout. Brown makes sure to emphasise the idea of “soul” for African Americans extends beyond genre classification and encapsulates a continuous situation of being considered categorically inhuman in the eyes of American governing bodies, people and organisations. The agonisingly rough portrayal of discrimination in all its glory.
Techno and its qualities of soul come from a long history of adaptation to a society designed to systematically exploit and oppress and sabotage people of colour and lives. Browns music steps beyond the capitalistic mentality and notions of a corrupt America to present Black techno in a very true form.