Born in Jim Crow-era Birmingham, Alabama in 1950, Lonnie Holley was the seventh of 27 children—and at age four was taken from his mother and traded for a bottle of whiskey (Bloom). He fled abusive foster parents, was hit by a car (and declared brain dead) and was later sent to Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children—a “slave camp” by any other name (Missick). Holley’s work, born out of struggle, hardship—and more importantly, out of furious curiosity and biological necessity—manifests itself in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, performance, filmmaking, and music.

Experience, in the words of The Guardian, one of “the 30 artists to see live before you die.” Holley is accompanied by the multi-generational, multi-gender, genre-non-conforming amalgam of Black culture known as Mourning [A] BLKstar—an Afrofuturist collective that wraps live instrumentation and hip-hop production around cosmic stories of apocalypse and survival.

This event is part of the CCAM Sound Art Series, a program of the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media (CCAM) at Yale and is presented by Yale Schwarzman Center in partnership with CCAM; Yale School of Art; Yale School of Music; and the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration.
 

Album: Oh Me Oh My by Lonnie Holley (2023)

“…unorthodox and moving songs out of the trauma and raw life materials that others would rather forget or discard…” – Pitchfork

Read More

Barton, Laura, et al. “The 30 Bands and Artists to See Live before You Die … or They Split Up.” The Guardian, 24 June 2023.

Bloom, Madison. “The Music That Made Cosmic Bluesman Lonnie Holley.” Pitchfork, 27 Mar. 2023.

Misick, Bobbi-Jean. “‘Unreformed’ Podcast Tells the Largely Untold Story of an Abusive Alabama Reform School.” WWNO, 8 Feb. 2023.

 

Zach, Schonfeld. “Albums: ‘Oh Me Oh My’ Lonnie Holley 2023.” Pitchfork, Mar. 2023.