Music Video of the Day: A.B. ORIGINAL “Report to the Mist” (2017)

If you happened to be one such music listener who was quick to spurn A.B. ORIGINAL‘s acclaimed album Reclaim Australia as nothing but hot air spurring on a senseless and tired debate, let’s go through a quick history lesson before we get to this music video.

Back in the 1980’s then-Prime Minister Bob Hawke called for a Royal Commission established to investigate 99 Aboriginal deaths in custody that took place between 1980 and 1989. Cultural and social contexts and circumstances were explored leading to the recommendations being delivered in 1991, many of which went ignored. One of the major conclusions the Royal Commission came to was that there were too many Aboriginal people being taken into custody, too often.. It was a fact that simply wouldn’t be stood for or ignored had it been applicable within the non-Aboriginal community.

Since that Royal Commission, new findings were released stating that there has been a staggering number of Indigenous deaths in prison and police custody – a whopping 339 deaths. Since the report, the number of adult Indigenous prisoners has doubled to 27% and while the rate of deaths in custody has decreased only slightly, the fact remains that Aboriginal people are dying in custody more today than when that original enquiry was first launched.

Which brings us to our Music Video of the Day – A.B. ORIGINAL’s “Report to the Mist”. The song itself remains one of Reclaim Australia‘s highlights, and easily one of the album’s most visceral. A statement on policy brutality in community, not to mention the ever-present issues of discrimination, unrest and division when it’s come to relations between Indigenous people and the police force, “Report to the Mist” was always going to strike a nerve, but it’s one that needed to be struck.

The official music video comes 30 years on from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and is a brutally honest and powerful visual accompaniment to what has been an inescapable song from one of the most acclaimed Australian albums of 2016.

You can find out more information about the Royal Commission and the current statistics surrounding the issues at hand at a specially-created website, www.reporttothemist.com.

A.B. ORIGINAL have also been announced to tour with Ice Cube‘s Body Count Australian tour this June. Dates below:

June 1st | The Tivoli, BRISBANE | Tickets
June 2nd | Margaret Court Arena, MELBOURNE | Tickets
June 3rd | Hordern Pavilion, SYDNEY | Tickets

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