Lotic Channels Ex-Pat Rage in His Fiery "Formation" Remix

The strangeness of watching the election returns roll in was made even more surreal for many people living overseas, like me, who went to bed on Tuesday night hoping for the best and woke up seven or eight hours later, scrolling through feeds and rubbing our eyes in disbelief: What, exactly, had happened while the lights were out?

One of those displaced Americans was Lotic, a black gay man from Texas who is now based in Berlin. As he watched Trump’s lead widen, he channeled his disbelief and his grief into a shuddering rework of Beyoncé‘s “Formation.” Lotic’s version—darkly subtitled “Election Anxiety/America Is Over Edit”—turns Beyoncé’s strutting call to arms into a cry of pain and defiance. Sirens, reminiscent of the Bomb Squad’s productions for Public Enemy, rip through the night air, warning of danger. Glass breaks: Someone is trying to pull the alarm.

A thrumming drum corps recalls the marching band that performed with Beyoncé at the Super Bowl—and serves as a musical tribute to the South, sent from thousands of miles away. “In Texas and Louisiana especially,” Lotic told me, “marching bands are synonymous with blackness.” (It was watching marching bands at work, in fact, that inspired Lotic to first pick up the saxophone. “The power of community I felt, even at that age, was overwhelming!”) The drummers bang out syncopated snare rolls as though their lives depend upon it—which, given the way things are going, they may well indeed. The message is clear: We are on the march, and you mess with us your own peril.

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