Lonnie Holley and his revolutionary blues. The tale of an outsider
Spoleto, June 18, 2023 - There is not only classical among the music opening the 66th Festival dei Due Mondi next weekend. After the inaugural concert dedicated to Leoš Janáček, the return ofopera with Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, the animals in music of the Midday Concerts and Olivier Messiaen's Harawi, one cannot miss the appointment with African-American artist Lonnie Holley and his revolutionary 'emotional blues.' At the Star Auditorium on Saturday, June 24 and Sunday, June 25 at at 9 p.m., Holley plays a selection of his songs between soul, avant-garde music, jazz and blues against the backdrop of his own works of art, accompanied by the Nelson Patton duo. Lonnie Holley is already to Spoleto, guest in residence at Mahler & LeWitt Studios. His works will be on display to the public at an Open Studio on Saturday, July 8 at at 5 p.m.
Lonnie Holley's extraordinary life is the beating matter of his art and music. A visual artist, designer, sculptor, painter, photographer and musician, Holley is a self-taught artist who created his first opera art when, in 1979, his granddaughters were killed in a fire at their home in Airport Hill, Alabama. The sculpture for their grave, made from materials salvaged from a landfill, is the first of his many assemblages, silkscreens, metals and salvaged objects. Born in 1950 in Alabama, the seventh of 27 children when segregationist laws were still in effect, he was "kidnapped" from a burlesque dancer, sold at the age of four for a bottle of whiskey, run over from a car, locked in a reform school, and employed as a cook at Disney World, until returning to Alabama and discovering art. In later years his works, again within the concept of 'art of trauma,' would come to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Venice Biennale, and the White House.
He made his debut as a musical artist in 2012 with the album Just Before Music, in which he sang, "Humans please listen, because to times it's okay to question deep down, I invite you to go as to deep as you can, because I believe that the deeper we go, the greater the chances of understanding."
He has also won awards for his music and has collaborated with groups such as Dirty Projectors and Animal Collective. In his songs he tackles universal themes, such as the fate of the planet or the relationship with technology, as well as to more personal stories, hovering between surrealism and sociopolitical message. His latest album, Oh Me Oh My features artists such as Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Sharon Van Etten, Moor Mother, Rokia Koné and Michael Stipe of REM, and was produced from Jacknife Lee (Modest Mouse, U2, REM).
"I think I was chosen to be an artist because I can take my life and tell to someone else about it. It's important to me to keep track of it," read the liner notes of his Keeping to Record of It in 2018.
"from somewhere between the authentic gospel elegance of Sam Cooke and the magical free-jazz transformism of Sun Ra, describing how Lonnie Bradley Holley's musical narrative moves resembles being assailed from a throbbing and imaginative stream of consciousness, that of someone who from over forty years encounters artistic insights in unfamiliar places and transforms vital pathos into unpredictable, yet always conscious art. Capable of restoring harmony to memory and curiosity to the future, somehow and in the same way," writes Giovanni Coppola in the room notes.