Cut Hands: Between Silence and Violence

A follow up to Josh Hall’s piece “Fascism and colonialism in the work of Cut Hands and Blackest Ever Black”  – published here because i doubt any music publication is willing to address these very serious issues.

Even if William Bennett, a UK citizen, was not aware of this method of punishment for unruly African subjects having been administered by his own government in Kenya, about which more and more is surfacing today, he was surely aware of King Leopold’s standard practice on Congolese rubber plantations when he chose the name Cut Hands.  (a wide spread colonial practice also popular in the Americas (for instance in the North American South, Cuba, Brazil, and Haiti), for crimes such as playing drums)

Continue reading