Unlike many protest songs birthed by the political situation in the US, the title track of Mavis Staples’s 16th solo album is bereft of rage. Instead – as with all of the songs on If All I Was Was Black – it replaces mockery and fury with a warm, calm clarity that is soothing and stirring. Staples explains how it feels to be judged by the colour of your skin (and, on other tracks, the effects of police brutality and internalised oppression) with a patience and simplicity that is heartrending. That the songs on the record, which largely deals with race and oppression, were written by a white man could have undercut the emotional heft. (That man being Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, a longtime collaborator of Staples, who soundtracks his words with a weighty marriage of gospel and blues rock.) But Staples has had decades of practice delivering truths as part of the Staple Singers – who were celebrated for their gospel “message songs” – and her performance here is so utterly convincing it feels like a moot point.
