Responding to the Republican-controlled legislature of North Carolina’s attempts to limit women’s reproductive rights and to criminalize black and brown bodies, the NC Music Love Army released “My Body Politic.” The song explores the many ways in which bodies are politicized and presents the reclaiming of one’s own body as a political act. The NC Music Love Army is part of the Moral Monday movement, which is fighting for progressive politics in North Carolina and hosts regular protests at the Capitol.
When thinking about embodied practice, music can be a puzzling medium. For the performer herself, music is always embodied. Yet a listener won’t see the body unless watching a video or seeing a show live (in which case the body might be a spec on a distant stage). Much of the way I consume music is through headphones, where a body performing the music is the last thing I’m thinking of. Music, though heavily embodied, thus seems disembodied when most people consume it. When the NC Music Love Army sang about bodies, the juxtaposition of music as embodied and disembodied stuck out to me.