Ames Harding penned his latest song for The Mirage while living in Cuba and Chile.
I just finished reading Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo, a hilarious and surreal historical novel in which 1920s white America finds itself knocked back on its heels by a cultural “virus” spread through jazz music and dancing. The novel also concerns itself with the United States’ occupation of Haiti, which lasted from 1915 to 1934 as it presided over sham governments, brutal forced labor practices, and summary executions. “The Governor’s Dead” balances the joyous and the disturbing in a way that upon first listen reminded me of Mumbo Jumbo. The song sets violent lyrics against a breezy, celebratory instrumental full of vibrant percussion and buoyant acoustic guitar strums. Harding sings, “The governor’s dead, my boy / Shot him in his head,” in the same unbothered tone he uses for sighed declarations of love. The sly delivery on “I do not know who would have done such a thing / I do not know who would want to hurt that man,” suggests that the narrator knows more about the plot than he’s letting on. It’s like “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” but with more coups and assassinations.
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