A few years before the release of Songs of an Unknown Tongue, Zara McFarlane travelled to her ancestral home of Jamaica. It was a research trip for a musical she was writing about an old Jamaican legend: The White Witch of Rose Hall—a twisted love story about a white woman who learns obeah, kills her lovers and enslaved peoples before eventually being killed by an enslaved labourer. This experience—travelling the country, conducting field research and interviews—sowed the seeds for this, her extraordinary fourth album. “It’s allegory of my personal journey exploring how the effects of colonialism resonates within my life today being Black and British,’’ Zara—who grew up in Dagenham, east London— tells Apple Music over the phone. Across the album’s 10 tracks we journey through semi-imagined histories spanning pre-colonialism, through enslavement and (the official) emancipation, to the present afterlife of slavery. It's not a linear timeline. McFarlane performs a kind of historical wake work here: Tending to unacknowledged histories, the living and the dead, the spirit and material worlds. “The story of the White Witch is set on the cusp of emancipation around 1834,” she says. “There were uprisings leading up to that moment, and I wanted to know what was happening musically at that time and to draw from those traditions. Most people think about ska as the beginning of Jamaican music, but there’s so much more, especially on the folk side.” Sonically, she encountered living folk traditions that largely came via enslaved peoples, and later indentured labourers from Africa and Asia. These rhythms—including Bruckins, Kumina, Ettu and many others—formed the basis of the album. “I wanted to make an album that was led by rhythm, percussion and vocals,” she says. She worked with celebrated producers and instrumentalists, Kwake Bass and Wu Lu to explore electronic expressions of these folk forms. It is an album of self-affirmation and witnessing, using music as a site for retrieving and pushing back on colonial histories. Here’s Zara’s track-by-track guide. Everything is Connected “This track was inspired by the cotton tree—it's vast and can grow ridiculously high. Mythically, it’s a place that holds the spirit of death through the creatures that live in it. Often these traditions are held by these trees in communion between sets of spirits. You hear those voices in that song, with the whispers I sing. These are the whispers of history and of those ancestors. This whole album takes you on a journey, from freedom and enslavement to emancipation. This part of the album is saying that everything is connected: it's exploring the idea of the cycle of life, the fact that life and death exist together in the same space.” Black Treasure “’Black Treasure’ is us: Black people. But on a wider level, it's speaking to everyone. To the essence of who you are. I primarily wanted it to be an anthem for Black people to feel empowered by. It’s also a reflection on the fact that the connotation of Black is always negative in the British language and in the media. I’m saying that Black is my history, my culture, my skin, my soul, my thoughts, my music, my words. All of it is treasure. Museums are filled with Black treasures—despite the fact that we’re called primitive and barbaric, so I'm exploring ideas of voyage, treasure hunting and the British Empire. I’m making comment on the taking that’s been done. The way that I like to write is that I like to have two parallel things happening at the same time—so this track could be about not being taken seriously in a relationship, not being treated as treasure. From the angle I’m writing from, I’m saying that I’m Black treasure and I don’t need you to tell me that. It's also speaking specifically to Black women, as we are not always celebrated. We are treasure.” My Story “I had this vision of seeing myself walking down the street. I met a book that told me it had lost its pages, and asked me to help it find them, so I did. I realised it was my story. It represents Black history: the seeking that I have done and want to continue to do to understand what happened, and to better understand my identity. It's about recognising and acknowledging and owning the past: I don't think that happens here in this country. When I was researching in Jamaica I found that the histories were spoken about in a different way—people were much more vocal and open about it. It's their reality and they live it. It was interesting to meet those people and ask myself how I might do that in the same way. In the UK we don’t recognise Britain’s association with slavery. I think about it sheepishly: can I even talk about it? So, to me the song is about finding a way to own and acknowledge those histories and move forward with it. Musically, it's based on the revivalist tradition, which is related to Chrisitianity and has a religious context to it. I like the upbeat side to it: with church music you’re praising and uplifting, so it's got a driving rhythm to it.” Broken Water “I made a conscious decision that I wanted the melody to feel disjointed. I heard the tracks as disjointed sentences with a kind of call and response. The sentences are constructed across two voices: You can’t get the full message without the two voices together. I wanted an element of dissonance—that feeling and that mood. It's about that sense of displacement after travelling across the waters, and the loss that people went through. This track has a nyabinghi rhythm, there’s a religious connotation here, too. Christianity was a tool for enslavement—enslaved people weren’t allowed to practice their traditions and Christianity was taught to hold them down. The track is also fragmented lyrically—and that speaks to the idea of languages being broken down and lost.” Saltwater “This is one of the ballads on the album—at this point in the story, we’re in enslavement. I use the imagery of being abandoned and stranded on an island. I chose to talk about these feelings in the context of a relationship. Saltwater is reference to the ocean tears from the frustration of feeling trapped. With the instrumentation, melodically, the synth sound that you hear is directly related to the Bruckins party rhythm. I love what Kwake did with this version: it's so open and spacious, it feels like water. There is a sense of loss because you don’t have the driving force of the rhythm to hold you down, so there’s that sense being stuck out in the middle of nowhere and feeling alone, either by yourself or in the context of the relationship.” Run of Your Life “Here we’re escaping from slavery—it’s the thing that’s going to get you to freedom in order to have a life. It's a mantra to keep pushing forward through adversity in general. I grew up in a single parent household, and learnt from the women around me to keep pushing forwards. This track is played on a drum machine. Kwake and Wulu recorded the percussion live and created a MIDI imprint and then used purely electronic sounds. It's basically about an escape to freedom.” State of Mind “This is based on the Kumina rhythm and tradition. Kumina was developed as neo-traditional African practice among freed peoples, and the indentured labourers who came to Jamaica after emancipation. The rhythm has a hypnotic trance like effect, and can cause people to do superhuman feats, like walking up trees. I love the idea of the hypnotic trance, and the idea of the heartbeat. For me, this song is about the power of the rhythm and how it can have an effect on one’s state of mind. I wanted to use it as a channeling force for healing and guidance. For Kwake, it was also a homage to ‘90s dance as well, he liked the beat and the pulse of that sound—that whole scene was almost spiritual for some people! The drums in Kumina celebrations are said to be particularly important because of the control they have over the spirit. That was partly how I wanted to use this as well. I wanted to draw from that in a positive way.” Native Nomad “At this point, we’ve come out of ‘Run of Your Life', where you’ve been escaping to freedom, into ‘State of Mind’ where you’re now on the other side and you’re asking where you go and what to do—you need to channel and get into a process of healing and guidance to be able to move forwards. ‘Native Nomad’ is about being in this new place and space and trying to fit in and understand what freedom is—you’re asking yourself how life then continues. Here, I’m literally writing about my experience of not fitting in as an English person, and not fitting in as a Jamaican person. It's about diaspora and how that feeling of displacement lingers across generations: This affinity with both worlds, and a yearning to go back to a homeland that was never our homeland. But it's ultimately about accepting who you are.” Roots of Freedom “This track takes us back to the idea of the tree again. This time it's about sowing seeds, and we are the seeds. We’ve accepted where we are now [at this point in the story]—we’re free. In being free we have the chance to improve the future for others. It's the idea of moving forward and the importance of a sense of unity for people: Black people, but also people throughout the world. It's about sowing the seeds for positive change. We own our future and we aren't limited. In leaning on history, we have the power to move better to move our forwards with strength.” Future Echoes “This track is about emancipation. We’re free. ‘Roots of Freedom’ is channeling freedom and getting the strength to move forward. ‘Future Echoes’ is also based on the Bruckins party tradition. It's about the future. What happens next. How we move forward. It's also about your relationship with yourself, and owing everything that has happened. Past hurts, future dreams, and directing the narrative of our own stories. It points to the fact that Black histories have always been told incorrectly: I’ve had to relearn my history. This track is about owning my story. I don’t need someone else to tell me my story: I’ve come through all of this. My history, my narrative, [so now it's about] my future for myself. It's a celebration of self-acceptance and rewriting the narrative. We realised that we’re not alone, and never have been.”