“A rousing, nearly transcendent experience, putting the unfamiliar into text and making familiar words seem sacred.” - NPR
“[the album] pairs dark, psychedelic jazz with searing observations about America.” - NEW YORK TIMES
“Entirely arresting and nonstop gorgeous.” - JEZEBEL
"A record ripe with breathlessly complex expression” - EXCLAIM!
“Her continued evolution is inspiring and moving.” - MTV
“monet asks questions that hook the listener and refuse to let go.” - CONSEQUENCE
Surrealist blues poet and community organizer aja monet has shared her debut album when the poems do what they do, out now via drink sum wtr. As previewed by the stirring single “why my love?” and the emotional short films accompanying “the devil you know” and “castaway,” the album’s thematic origins center around resistance, love, and the inexhaustible quest for joy. She is joined on her journey by a potent roster of esteemed musicians, including Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah FKA Christian Scott (trumpet), Samora Pinderhughes (piano), Elena Pinderhughes (flute), Luques Curtis (bass), Weedie Braimah (percussion), and Marcus Gilmore (drums) as well as additional vocals by bluesman Lonnie Holley, soul singer Eryn Allen Kane, DJ & radio host Novena Carmel and more. The songs are an ethereal journey exploring the many facets of the human experience, with some reminiscent of jazz club virtuosity and melee while others act as a healing balm in gilead. The album is a potent demonstration of her indefatigable commitment to speak, her poems manifesting as a work of gravity that move constantly between origin and outcome, allowing them to exist in converse. The runup to the album has yielded no shortage of notice, including nods and accolades from New York Times, NPR, Jezebel, MTV, BET, American Songwriter, Cultured, Treble, Okayplayer, and more acknowledging the breadth of her singular vision and talent.
As a community organizer, poet, and educator aja monet moves between mediums, each one an element to her art. Organizing and activism manifest as part of a process toward liberation, with the poems, the music, and the art serving as the scribe of the time. Building off oratorical traditions, aja is the conduit for her predecessors to channel through. At any given time you’ll find the revolutionary spirit of Audre Lorde and the Last Poets, you’ll feel June Jordan, Amiri Baraka, Jayne Cortez and even the expressive ephemerality of a passing blue note. She has been a poet since youth: she cut her teeth within the walls of the legendary Nuyorican Poets Café, where she won the title of Grand Slam Champion in 2007 at age 19, making her the youngest Grand Slam Champion in the venue’s history. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and living briefly in Paris, aja co-edited Chorus: A Literary Mixtape alongside poet-actor-director Saul Williams and published her first full length book of poetry called My Mother was A Freedom Fighter with Haymarket Books. As a highly regarded and decorated poet, aja received the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award for Poetry in 2019 after being nominated for an NAACP Literary Award for Poetry in 2018. A well known cultural worker for her grassroots on-the-ground efforts, she also currently holds the role of Artistic Director for V-Day, focusing on the intersection of art and activism to shatter taboos, creating space for women and the most marginalized, and initiating community led culture and system change.
On when the poems do what they do aja monet appears as a woman of letters and storm, her poems do not roar in pentameter - but rather in storm surge because, “Who’s got time for poems when the world is on fire?!.” aja monet is a griot, a storyteller, a chronicler, and your grandmother telling you about her first love all at once. These aren’t poems for poets, but poems for everyone. When you reach the end of this album, you are left with a similar feeling you get when heartbroken, the gravity of barrelling back down to earth, sopping wet with tears, out of breath, overcome with love, despair, hope, and all too aware that all of this, is over far too soon. When the poems do what they do, they do absolutely everything.
Stream/Purchase when the poems do what they do https://drinksumwtr.ffm.to/wtpdwtd
Watch the “why my love?” visualizer https://youtu.be/k3cgfawh0vQ
Watch the short film for “castaway” https://youtu.be/OHAoAHetsjM
Watch the short film for “the devil you know” https://youtu.be.com/3NwNKPbaE3I
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