Benjamin Booker is back with a powerful story to tell on his new single Witness.
Contained within the track is the artist’s deeply personal battle with the subjects of identity and belonging, all starting with a lack of inspiration and him fleeing to Mexico.
“By February of 2016, I realized I was a songwriter with no songs, unable to piece together any words that wouldn’t soon be plastered on the side of a paper airplane,” his statement begins. “The next day I packed up my clothes, books and a cheap classical guitar I picked up in Charleston. I headed to to Louis Armstrong Airport and took a plane from New Orleans to Houston to Mexico City. As I flew above the coast of Mexico, I looked out the plane window and saw a clear sky with the uninhabited coast of a foreign land below me. I couldn’t help but smile”
“My heart was racing. I was running. I rented an apartment on the border of Juarez and Doctores, two neighborhoods in the center of the city, near the Baleras metro station and prepared to be mostly alone.”
Booker goes on to recount a period of first isolation and then gradual reemergence with his friend and guide Mauricio, only for an altercation with locals to spark fresh reflections on his experiences growing up in the US’ south.
The album of the same name is out on June 2nd and was recorded at The Isokon studio in Woodstock, New York and New York City’s Red Delicious studio.