Brother Theotis Taylor strikes his signature pose. Film still from Somebody’s Gone by Cyrus Moussavi.
Brother Taylor and Deacon Russell. Film still from Somebody’s Gone by Cyrus Moussavi.
A photo of Brother Taylor in the 1950s, his first ever publicity photo.
A polaroid photo of Brother Taylor’s upright piano. Photo: Theotis Taylor.
The cover of Brother Taylor’s 2020 Mississippi Records release.
Brother Taylor at age 92, holding his Mississippi Records vinyl release. Photo: Hubert Taylor.
Somebody’s Gone
Cyrus Moussavi is an Iranian-American filmmaker and producer of musical artifacts.
Artist BioSomebody’s Gone is a feature-length documentary about 94-year-old spiritual singer Brother Theotis Taylor told through a remarkable archive of footage collected by his son, Hubert. Over his lifetime, Brother Taylor harvested turpentine, raised eight kids, preached, played piano, and sang spirituals in a sublime falsetto that made him the pride of Fitzgerald, Georgia. His music took him to Carnegie Hall and the Apollo, but the vast majority of his performances occurred within 50 miles of his home. He is beloved in some of the poorest counties in South Georgia and virtually unknown everywhere else. Somebody’s Gone merges Hubert’s vast home-video archive with contemporary vérité footage to tell a multi-generational, multi-vocal story of Brother Taylor and his sacred music.
Cyrus Moussavi
Brooklyn, NY
Cyrus Moussavi is an Iranian-American filmmaker and producer of musical artifacts. His short I Snuck Off the Slave Ship, a sci-fi-documentary collaboration with acclaimed artist Lonnie Holley, premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and was released on the Criterion Channel. As founder of Raw Music International, a documentary collective telling social, political, and cultural stories through music, he has produced films on music in Iraq, Ukraine, Burma, Mongolia, and Western Sahara. His work has been published by NBC News, Time, and Wall Street Journal, and has screened at places like BAM CinemaFest, Anthology Film Archives, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, and Mawaheb Fest St. Petersburg. Since 2019 he has co-owned Mississippi Records, an independent record label releasing overlooked music. He works directly with artists and their heirs to equitably reintroduce their work to an international audience. Moussavi studied economics and philosophy at Columbia University and conducted an oral history of Iranian migrants in northern Europe on a Fulbright grant. He grew up between Iowa and Iran.