Award-winning musician and storyteller Lance Sampson, known as Aquakultre, has released a powerful new single and video titled Gallows, a deeply personal work confronting a painful chapter in his family’s past and Canada’s history of racial injustice.

The song draws inspiration from the story of Sampson’s great-great-grandfather, Daniel Perry Sampson, who was executed in 1935 after being wrongfully convicted of murder. He was the last person to be hanged in Halifax.

Aquakultre learned of the case from his grandmother, Carolyn Sampson, whose doubts about the conviction led her grandson to investigate the matter nine decades later. His research confirmed what the family had long suspected, that the trial was marked by systemic anti-Black bias and constituted a grave miscarriage of justice.

Written from Daniel Sampson’s imagined perspective in his final moments, Gallows transforms personal grief into an artistic act of remembrance and protest. The accompanying video, directed by Sobaz Benjamin, weaves imagery of spirituality, resistance, and redemption. Benjamin describes the work as an exploration not only of oppression but also of transformation, the capacity of Black communities to reclaim stories long buried by prejudice.

On March 7, marking the 90th anniversary of the execution, the Sampson family formally requested a review of the case by the federal Minister of Justice. They have launched a Fundrazr campaign to support legal and travel costs tied to the appeal.

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  Halifax