Brooke Obie

This week, St. Louis activist and theologian Reverend Osagyefo Sekou was acquitted of charges stemming from his involvement in a 2014 protest for slain teenager Michael Brown. The reverend had been arrested for kneeling down to pray in front of a line of riot police in Ferguson, Missouri.

A prominent leader in the movement for Black lives, Rev. Sekou has traveled the diaspora protesting police brutality and injustice, connecting protestors and supporting local initiatives from Ferguson to Palestine. He and his musical partner, Jay-Marie “Holy Ghost” Hill, have now channeled the hurt, frustration, anger and joy of the movement and the streets into an album, The Revolution Has Come.

“We just had the blues and had to sing,” says Rev. Sekou, sharing why he needed to release this gospel-soul-funk album with Hill (whom he met after police pepper-sprayed Hill during a protest in Cleveland). With lyrics laced with the chants of Black Lives Matter protestors across the country and full of an audible love for the people, The Revolution Has Come adds to a growing soundtrack of collective Black struggle.

Featuring a ballad for murdered trans woman Lamia Beard (“Past Time”), an ode to the women pillars of the Black Lives Matter movement (“Sanctified”) and a fiery first single expressing the movement’s rallying cry (“We Comin’ ”), The Revolution Has Come offers soul-level medicine for a weary people.

Now that Rev. Sekou has been found not guilty, he and Holy Ghost plan to tour the country promoting the album. EBONY.com caught up with the reverend to talk about everything from the message in his music to Campaign Zero founder DeRay Mckesson’s Baltimore mayoral run, and what’s next for the movement.
Read more at EBONY http://www.ebony.com/news-views/rev-sekou-interview#ixzz3zsmGrzeh

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