The Contorted Language in “ICE Children” by Tracie Morris
“ICE Children” is performed by poet Tracie Morris. She sings it on a stage to the tune of an African American spiritual, “Rock O’ My Soul,” but implements sound erasure to give it new meaning. Sound erasure is a technique poets use to derive different interpretations of an original work and reshape them into a new work.
She begins singing the song normally, repeating “rock o’ my soul in the bosom of Abraham” (Morris 2019) until she begins adding her own lyrics and changing the way the song is sung. As the song progresses, she becomes more difficult to understand. For a while, the only intelligible word that she mumbles is “babies” (Morris 2019). She goes on to contort lyrics such as “my brother,” making it “my mother” and later, “where’s my mother?” (Morris 2019) as if she were a child. She continues and switches the perspective while singing, adding “where my babies at?” (Morris 2019). She then reiterates “the babies” again before she becomes almost completely inaudible. Her voice wavers and shakes as she becomes more distraught. Her mumbling and slurring of words becomes an aggressive hum, and then progresses into a distorted “ma” or “mom” that is constantly repeated until she eventually sounds as though she is sobbing.
Get Raegan Montrym’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Morris reshapes the original song to fit a new, modern narrative. As I interpreted her performance, she is telling the story of a family being torn apart by ICE from the perspectives of both a mother and her children. She enunciates the words “mother” and “babies” to humanize the way the controversial topic of immigration is talked about in society. By utilizing sound erasure in this performance, she is forcing the audience to empathize with this mother and these children, and therefore all families affected by ICE.
Morris, Tracie. “Tracie Morris: ICE Children.” YouTube, The 92nd Street Y, New York, 29 March 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3yF67aEuP0
