Rootsworld

My November 2018 pick for Music of the Month is the stunning and challenging music of Ann O'aro from the island nation of Réunion. O'aro is a poet, dancer, singer and composer who dedicates this album to the lost and abused of her island, the victims of violence and sexual assault, incest and rape, not in a tone of hopeless despair, but in defiant survival and healing, in realistic hope. As Bruce Miller writes in his RootsWorld review, "Musically, Ann O’aro is breathtaking. Her voice is as sinewy as it is soothing, as if she needed to calm all of us so that we’d be OK. But she’s also clearly insistent… if she’s not showing her anger in more typical fashion- smashing things, getting into fights- she’s letting it out without compromise in music that turns torture into art."