DJ Spooky and Kronos Quartet - Rebirth Of A Nation (2015)

Paul D. Miller is probably most well-known under his “constructed persona” as DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid. He has recorded a huge volume of music and collaborated with a wide variety of musicians and composers, among them Iannis Xenakis, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kronos Quartet, Pierre Boulez, Steve Reich, Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore and many others.

Conceived as a remix and reimagination of director D.W. Griffith’s infamously racist 1915 silent film The Birth of a Nation, Rebirth of a Nation, recorded with Kronos Quartet, is a controversial and culturally significant project that examines how “…exploitation and political corruption still haunt the world to this day, but in radically different forms.” Originally commissioned in 2004 by the Lincoln Center Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Weiner Festwochen, and the Festival d’Automne a Paris, the project was Miller’s first large-scale multimedia performance piece, and has been performed around the world, from the Sydney Festival to the Herod Atticus Amphitheater, more than fifty times.

“We need more than ever to see the context that early cinema offers us," Miller says. "As my old friend Saul Williams likes to say: Another World Is Possible. A remix of a film as deeply important and problematic as The Birth of a Nation reminds us that many of these issues still linger with us at every level.”

Tracklist:

01. The Broken Compass (Intro Theme)
02. A Nation Divided
03. North Isn't South
04. The Most Dangerous Woman in America
05. Stoneman
06. Cameron
07. The Parallax Waltz
08. Gettysburg Requiem
09. What Would Moses Say?
10. Lincoln and Booth Get Acquainted
11. Dixie As Anti-Utopia
12. Blackface (We Are All Sharecroppers Now)
13. Getting Biblical
14. The Election and Results: The New Montage
15. Gus, Elsie, Silas and the Klan
16. Black Militia
17. Ride of the Klansmen
18. The Next Election
19. Ghost of a Smile