As the cameras pan onto a mystical scene, something that could be mistaken for a Renaissance painting, we see a mother holding onto her child surveying a harmonious landscape of chalky cliffs meeting blurry-eyed clouds and endless possibilities. But has she finally found her peace?
This is the beginning of the music video to Maverick Sabre’s single, ‘Her Grace’, featuring Chronixx. The wordsmith and storyteller, with the distinctly beautiful and potent voice, articulates the muted, silenced female perspective through a sympathetic male gaze. The lyrics echo a gendered language littered with hindering, stereotypical bonds from society and clichés that women succumb to. The video’s female protagonist is forced to be multifaceted. The lyrics paint her as an “angel”, “sister”, “beautiful princess”, “rose”, “mother” but she is also “fall[ing] from grace”. Different scenes shift between her showering, walking into the sea and bathing as she is numbly forced to quickly switch into a different role and thus she must cleanse herself. She is simultaneously a nurturing, saintly mother, a sexual partner and a punching bag to take the force but she is losing her true essence within every expected duty she undertakes.
Sabre stated that: “Her Grace is a reflection on how women are and have been mistreated so often in our society and how it is regularly pushed under the carpet and forgotten about. The story of abuse and pain and unseen tears.”
Boxed into the mundane, everyday and domestic scene, our female protagonist does not smile once. She even attempts to hide her black eye while completing the monotonous task of shopping as she urges identification and empathy from us.
As Ibsen’s ‘A Doll’s House’ ends with stage directions of Nora slamming a door, is this our modern take on the classic? In a moment of enlightenment, our protagonist sits behind the wheel of the car, straps in her baby and transcends the abuse of her relationship and expectations of a patriarchal society. In this moment she is a feminist symbol of regaining control over her own life. She rewrites her own tale, seizing the pen from male critics, where she becomes the heroine. She is the phoenix rising from the ashes escaping her suffocating environment of submission, confinement, judgement and demands.
Maverick Sabre’s new album, ‘When I Wake Up’, will be released on March 22nd 2019 featuring Jorja Smith. His tour will start on March 29th.
Not much has changed but I’m so glad some talented, articulate men said it.
Album pre-order and tour dates are up here; https://ffm.to/
