Lonnie Holley’s Tonky is a masterful history lesson for the world we deserve

This makes it all the more astounding that Holley leads new record Tonky with a straightforward directive of love; not boundless love, not unconditional love, but a pointed, militant caress of the hope our species can’t shake. Hearing “Protest with Love” after the politically jaded, sumptuously empathic songs of his previous record Oh Me, Oh My instilled a fear that his decisive edges had been worn down. This is not an era of love, and certainly not the moment to have love come and be the antidote anyway; we’re jaded with oligarchs and their government lackeys trying to half-heartedly unite us while looking down the barrel of what they’ve prepared for us.

I don’t predict anyone is in the mood to protest with love, or to protest at all; 1790s France is the go-to image of mood-boards across the world. It’s why hearing it from Lonnie Holley – of all people – actually has the grit to stick like all worthwhile political commentary does. After a lifetime of disenfranchisement, his bucket of hate is empty, but not without purpose. This is where our notetaking begins.

Tonky is rhythmic and political fury where 2023’s Oh Me, Oh My was glistening and abstract personal connecting: fury, funk – where love takes the shape of fire. Retaining Holley’s truly singular spoken word and gravelly presence, Tonky is his expansive, dare-I-say blockbuster enterprise. With euphorically dense production from Jackknife Lee (R.E.M., The Killers), it's a churning den of galloping funk and cinema with length and breadth reserved for epics, yet remains as daringly personal as anything Holley has written before. Central to the record’s topical content is his time as a child at Mount Meigs, or rather, the Alabama Industrial School for Negro Children.

A proto-prison acting as a bastion of slavery and abuse in the modern day, the tortures and near-escapes he endured are the throughline of his political messaging. He may be older in age, but he’s young to history, and horrifically close to the current day; the hells history conjured, the ones that shape modern politics and strike fear in us for their return, never ceased. They changed face, and slipped through. Holley is the face of the forgotten survivor, of pushing through pains swept under the rug in the name of global narratives of progress. His position across the record, beginning with the history-spanning opener “Seeds,” is that to forget history, to forget the pain suffered at the hands of cruel white supremacy, is to forsake its connection to where we exist now. Mount Meigs is the memory of a man singing to you now; there is no need for second-hand stories when their witnesses plead with you in the present. Forget his story, and you forsake him the same.

The listening public should be uniquely grateful that the art erupting from this message of radical awareness is likewise rich and impactful. It’s consistently propulsive, passionately performed, and paced with euphoric enthusiasm to the point where even its still moments are pushing themselves forward. No faith has to be placed on Holley’s songwriting ability like on previous releases, and no climax must be waited for; each track cedes itself into moment after moment like sifting grains.

Two of those moments are direct homage and commentary to previously impactful soul standards, the tracks “What’s Going On” at the centrepiece and “A Change is Gonna Come” at the closer. Neither of them are covers of the iconic soul songs, but are their own feats of songwriting brilliance. Each song retains the core lines said in their titles, but shifts the lyrics and instrumentals around them. The result is a recontextualization of their initial sentiments to stunning degrees. “A Change is Gonna Come” isn’t just Sam Cooke’s personal heralding of a better tomorrow, but now, is a question from Holley to the listener. Are you strong enough to create that change? Are any of us? Change will come, as it always does, but what will any of this look like when it does?

We often don’t recognize suffering when we see it, so it fits that we might not recognize change when it arrives; maybe it’s already here. Maybe suffering never left. These two forces exist in tandem, helixing around history. One thing remains, though, that we are acutely aware of how to put our finger down and trace them throughout our shared, embattled past. Maybe it’s time to point that finger forward.