Influenza with The Majestic Twelve’s Kenyata Sullivan
Approach Influenza as a series which serves to help give insight as to where music is born; these are the thoughts, influences and the inspirations directly from the mind of the artists. In this edition, The Majestic Twelve’s Kenyata Sullivan discusses the dark story behind his recently penned “Eminent Domain.” The focus of the delicate track establishes a story of injustice in his native North Carolina, questioning the ethics of how the Town of Cary pursued its Highway 55 expansion, examining the real impact it had on the road’s neighboring citizens. Rather than lashing out however Sullivan channels his focus, sentimentally aiming it at the shame of the story by questioning the government’s failure to separate ethics from legality.
On “Eminent Domain”:
When I was in the studio a couple of days ago working on the new Majestic Twelve disc, I read an article in The Independent about a woman who’s land was taken by the city of Cary, NC via eminent domain (meaning that the government forced her against her will to sell it to them for the “greater good”). The woman was poor, and she’d had a premature daughter who’d died when she was only a week old back in the 1970′s. The woman and her family couldn’t afford a funeral service, so they built a small coffin themselves, and buried their little girl beneath a tree in the yard.
Last year, the city said the grave didn’t matter, and they took that part of her land against her will, so they could expand a road. They dug her daughter’s grave out of the ground with a backhoe while she watched from her kitchen, crying with her preacher. The heaps of dirt pulled up from the backhoe were not thoroughly searched, and her daughter’s bones were not found. The city, in order to make what they thought were amends, bought a new headstone for the girl, and stuck it randomly somewhere down the road.
The story struck me, so I wrote and recorded this song about it that morning instead of doing what I’d originally planned. Be forewarned that it has the kind of mainstream progression that I have a sentimental fondness for, but is likely to make most indie rockers squish their faces up with rage like they accidentally just swallowed a Celine Dion shaped potato bug.
