With the presidential election a lot less than two weeks away and a heated remaining debate amongst President Donald Trump and Democratic prospect Joe Biden now more than, SOHH provides filmmaker Darryl Wharton-Rigby an chance to make clear how his ought to-view “STAND” songs video – which features woke lyrics and legendary times in Black rights historical past – is much far more than a protest visible for Black Life Subject but a phone to action.

[Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own. SOHH.com provides a platform for thoughtful and sound perspectives from Hip-Hop culture.]

When I read the music, STAND, I linked with it instantly. I was honored to be questioned to direct the new music video clip. It all came jointly promptly and was in worldwide effort and hard work. I am in Japan, just exterior of Tokyo. The team is primarily in Baltimore, which is also my hometown. And, our editor was in New York. Consequently, this was carried out remotely with a lot of conversation occurring on the net and in unique time zones. 
Conceptually, I desired to connect the dots of the Black Lives Make any difference movement in historical context. Visually it’s a collage or a patchwork akin to a digital quilt. Given that there are 4 primary customers in the team, Jeff, Tavon, Wayne, and Antoine this thought arose of splitting the monitor into four quadrants. Each member would occupy their personal panel.

Encompassing them, I needed to have photographs of the BLM movement as very well as others that place it all into context. None of what is occurring now is in a vacuum. It’s portion of a continuum. I needed to clearly show this in the video clip.

We have photos of Crispus Attucks, who is viewed as the 1st person to die for American independence from the British. We present Whipped Peter who escaped slavery in 1863 in Lousiana. We give props to abolitionist John Brown along with shosts of  people like Muhammad Ali, Nina Simone, Al Sharpton, Angela Davis, Shirley Chisolm, and Fannie Lou Hamer.  We also needed to touch on the simple fact that the movement encompases Indigenous Us residents, Asians, and Latinix people today. This is proven with footage of folks like Russell Suggests and Yuri Kochiyama

Through this function, we wanted to link BLM to the Civil Legal rights motion and the operate of the Black Panther Get together. They all have spoken out from law enforcement brutality. Also incorporated are visuals or the names of Black people who have been attacked and we see that have been employed with hashtags more than the past couple of yrs – Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Sandra Bland, Philando Castille, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin.   

We hope that folks will enjoy the movie with an open thoughts and do even further investigate. There are so numerous far more images and folks that we could have included. But at the conclude of the day, we want men and women to take a stand to see that there are people who have died for their liberty. There are people today combating versus injustice. And that we all should get the job done alongside one another to make The united states are living up to what it touts to be. And, the just one issue that we can do to use our voice collectively is to vote, which is fundamentally the final concept of the video. It is not just about protest, but a connect with to motion.