Thin Black Line

Written & arranged by Aaron Jones
Strings arranged by Seonaid Aitken
Cello arranged by Alice Allen

Musicians
Aaron Jones (Vocals, Cittern)
Rachel Walker (Vocals, Keys)
Duncan Lyall (Double Bass)
Katrina Lee (Violin)
Patsy Reid (Violin)
Rhoslyn Lawton (Viola)
Alice Allen (Cello)

Aaron’s inspiration:

Glasgow born Maud Sulter, (1960 - 2008) was a Scottish contemporary fine artist, photographer, writer, educator, feminist, cultural historian and curator of Ghanaian heritage. As well as leaving an incredible body of work, Maud will be remembered as a hugely vocal and important figure in the movement to ‘un-erase’ Black and Asian art from art history. She was one of a collective of artists who organised ‘The Thin Black Line’, an exhibition in 1985 designed to challenge the collective invisibility of Black and Asian women in the art world and to engage with the social, political and cultural issues of the time.

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LYRICS

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The place where you were born and raised.

Tenements, closes, bricked and paved.

Your muses missing from the frame,

Erased from history.

 

A love affair with image, life,

You brought the shadows into light.

And though we see through different eyes,

You helped re-paint the page.

 

A thin black line to help us see,

The faces wiped from history.

Challenge invisibility,

With lens and brush and pen.

 

To bridge the differences between,

Cultures, countries, families.

And in your dark room, colours bleed,

To give the lost a name.

 

The camera doesn't stigmatise.

And love cares not for place or time.

Or colour, gender, reason, rhyme.

Frozen time and light.

 

So, lens and pen defeat the sword.

Heroic poetry implores,

Remember those who went before,

The colours bright and bold.