About Ezra Furman's Book Of Our Names
"Book Of Our Names” is sparse but deeply emotive, with Furman’s voice guiding through the pulsing guitars. “This song is about what it feels like to live together under an empire that doesn’t value your lives,” Furman says. “I sing it as a Jew and as a trans woman, knowing well the stakes and consequences of being part of a hated population. But it is a protest song intended for use by any movement for collective survival and freedom. I noticed that the book of the Bible called Exodus in English, the one where the Hebrews escape slavery in Egypt, is called the Book of Names in Hebrew. And I started to think that the act of saying names out loud, of seeing individuals in their full irreplaceable uniqueness, holds the seed of true liberation.”