What the Land Left Within

My Mama was born in Louisiana. My ancestry runs through that land, and there’s something about returning to a place connected to your family that makes you question how much of your history you actually understand. Traveling along River Road, visiting Whitney Plantation and walking through New Orleans brought me closer to things I’d studied; things I’d heard about, and things that are still difficult to comprehend. There’s a difference between knowing what happened somewhere and standing on the ground where it happened.

At Whitney Plantation, I stood before the memorial to those killed following the 1811 German Coast uprising. The severed heads, recreated in sculpture, represent people who resisted slavery and were executed for it. I also saw the sculpture of the hand gripping its chains. I thought about how much of American history has been told through the people who held power rather than the people who fought against it. We spend so much time discussing the institution of slavery that we sometimes lose sight of the individuals who refused to accept it, even when resistance meant death. Standing there made that impossible to ignore.

I carried those thoughts into New Orleans. At St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, I visited the tomb of Marie Laveau. It had been cleaned, the markings that people had left over the years no longer covering it. I didn’t touch anything. I didn’t leave an offering or carve some ridiculous symbol into the stone. I paid my respects through prayer and meditation. That’s how I chose to approach it, through my own understanding of faith, ancestry, and the history of the people buried there.

I’ve always found it strange how comfortable people are turning historical figures into entertainment while barely knowing anything about their actual lives. Marie Laveau was a Catholic Christian woman and a spiritual leader associated with Louisiana Voodoo. She lived in a society where race, religion, freedom, and survival were deeply intertwined. Her story has been buried beneath so much mythology that separating the woman from the legend requires actual research. Popular culture has done her few favors. Even American Horror Story invented a rivalry between her and Madame LaLaurie that history doesn’t establish. It’s easier to sell people a supernatural story than confront the complicated reality of Black life in 19th Century New Orleans.

And I don’t need to pretend every part of that history is simple. Louisiana had its own racial hierarchies, its Code Noir, its free communities of color, and an economy built on the enslavement of human beings. Faith existed alongside exploitation. Freedom existed alongside bondage. People survived through circumstances that deserve far more examination than the romanticized versions we’re usually given.

Standing near Laveau’s tomb, I felt an intensity that’s difficult to put into words. I felt powerful, connected, and deeply aware of where I was. I’m not interested in telling anyone what they’re supposed to believe about that experience. I know what I felt. I was standing in a cemetery in the city where generations of people lived, suffered, loved, worshipped, and died. That alone was enough to make me quiet.

I also visited Nicolas Cage’s pyramid tomb, with the Latin inscription Omnia Ab Uno — everything from one. There’s something strange about standing between centuries of history and a modern monument someone constructed for his own eventual death. Different lives, different circumstances, different ideas about what deserves to be remembered. I kept thinking about how people leave pieces of themselves behind, sometimes deliberately, sometimes without ever knowing what will survive them.

I didn’t return from Louisiana believing I had suddenly figured out my ancestry or understood everything I witnessed. That would be dishonest. I came back with more questions, more footage, and a deeper responsibility to understand the history connected to my family. I thought about my mother, the people who came before her, and the countless lives whose names I’ll probably never know. I thought about how easily history becomes something we consume instead of something we’re willing to confront.

Somewhere in those experiences, Blackwater began taking shape. Not because I traveled there looking for a song, but because I couldn’t separate what I’d witnessed from what I wanted to express afterward. The music carries part of that experience, but it doesn’t belong to the music alone.

I brought the footage home. I brought the questions home. And I brought a history that was already connected to me long before I understood how much of it I still had to learn.