'Oh Me Oh My': Finding grace after something hellified (a New Year's story)

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 December 2023

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

To close out the year, Brittany is sitting down with Lonnie Holley. He's a painter, sculptor, and musician who released his latest album, Oh Me Oh My, in early 2023. In it he sings of his difficult childhood growing up in Jim Crow Alabama where he was sold, beat, and effectively enslaved. But today he sings of hope. He's been on a journey to heal his pain, and the pain of the generations that came before and the ones that will follow. It's a story of gratitude.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Whether you've got a small goal for 2024 or you want to change your life in a more
0:04.8	monumental way, head over to the Life Kit Podcast. We've got 50 potential New Year's
0:10.3	resolutions for you and we will help you pick out the right one with our handy resolution
0:15.1	planner. Take your goals off hold by heading over to nprr.org slash life kit or by searching
0:21.2	life kit wherever you get your podcasts.
0:24.0	Hello Hello. I'm Brittany Loose and you're listening to It's been a minute from NPR.
0:31.0	A show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. Maybe it's the end of the year or the fact that the sun has been
0:48.9	setting earlier and earlier but I've been reflecting on that phrase a lot lately. Why culture doesn't
0:56.4	happen by accident. I say it every episode of this show, and the more I say it, the more I see
1:02.0	it out in our world. I see it, the more I see it out in our world.
1:03.7	I see it in the movies we watch, the stories we read, and the music we listen to. where we come from has so much impact on what we say and do. And that simple idea is the core concept of an
1:26.3	album you may have missed this year. Oh me, oh my, by Lonnie Holly. It's an album about intergenerational healing, addressing wounds that
1:36.0	have persisted from enslavement to the Jim Crow American South all the way to today.
1:41.9	It's about gratitude for the love and even the pain we experience.
1:46.8	And I think it's one of the best albums of the year.
1:49.7	I'm wanted to play.
1:58.0	I want it to play. I want it to play.
2:00.0	I want it to play
2:05.0	to play
2:07.0	I should I go
2:10.0	Lani Holly is a musician and a visual artist. His huge sculptures are melded from found objects and he's shown his visual work in galleries and museums around the world.
2:22.0	He turned 73 this year and somehow among all that he found
	...

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