“Banks Of The Brazos” is the continuation of a sobering, real-life story Roger Avenue Friedman first documented on 2022’s “The Ghosts Of Sugarland.” That tune addresses the 2018 discovery of the stays of 95 laborers in Sugar Land, Texas, about 20 miles southwest of Houston. All had been found to be victims of a barbaric, bigoted Nineteenth-century jail system.
“They had been all African-American males trapped in a brutal sample of re-enslavement based mostly on a loophole within the 14th Modification that mentioned these convicted of crimes could possibly be used for pressured labor,” says the Lengthy Island, N.Y.-based singer, songwriter and activist. “Lots of the so-called crimes had been based mostly on legal guidelines particularly written to ensnare just lately freed black males on the lookout for work within the post-Civil Conflict South. An individual could possibly be arrested for loitering and despatched to work within the cane fields, the place they’d die of ‘warmth stroke’ inside a month or two.”
Concern-oriented songs have been a Friedman forte ever since he resurrected his music profession within the 2010s, placing out a collection of self-released albums which have linked with critics and listeners within the roots/Americana scene. “Brazos” is a standout observe from Lengthy Shadows, his fifth album, which is due January 24. A TikTok clip of Friedman telling the story of the Sugar Land 95 has racked up almost 1,000,000 views.
“I needed to jot down particularly from the angle of the lads to attempt to get a way of what it should have been like—how brutal it was,” says Friedman. “This historical past had been hidden within the clay and sand of Texas. The wealth generated from this labor actually helped rebuild the South, however these males and their tales have been largely misplaced to historical past.”
We’re proud to premiere Roger Avenue Friedman’s “Banks Of The Brazos.”
—Hobart Rowland
