Born from a restless night, but echoing far beyond one man’s insomnia, Jeremy Mage and Wunmi’s “In Gaza Today” is a punch to the chest, uncompromising and urgent.
The track begins with a blues-rock grit that would sit comfortably beside the Black Keys, but it doesn’t stop there. Mage weaves in a swirling intensity that feels like The Doors in their most feverish moments, only to let the afrobeat fire anchor it all with irresistible rhythm. The result? A three-legged creature of sound: raw blues, psychedelic urgency, and afrobeat propulsion. It’s impossible to stand still.
But behind the groove lies a heavier weight. Mage woke in the middle of the night, jolted not just by his three-year-old but by a haunting question: what does it mean to be a good parent in Gaza today? The question alone is heartbreaking, and the song doesn’t pretend to have an answer. Instead, it lifts the doubt and despair into something collective. It becomes less about private fear, more about a call to raise our voices.
There’s no escapism here. The music drags the listener into the very tension of parenting in a time of violence—how to protect, how to guide, how to love when the world feels merciless. That weight is carried on the groove, which is what makes the track so gripping. It’s not just catharsis, it’s resistance wrapped in rhythm.
About Jeremy Mage:
Jeremy Mage’s path was never going to be straight. A New Yorker now based in Switzerland, he’s as likely to be found behind a church B-3 as in a mosh pit breaking his nose (twice). His teachers read like a roll call of legends—Baba Olatunji, Alan Ginsberg, Fred Frith, Yusef Lateef—and his travels stretched from Havana to Varanasi, studying clave and raga along the way. He’s toured with Lizz Wright, Wunmi, and the Easy Star All Stars, and his 2022 album “Pretty Songs about Death” was released on the Day of the Dead. Fittingly, he writes music that sounds alive with contradictions.
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