When he saw photos of police driving tanks through Ferguson,Missouri, Son Little was rudely awakened from a dream. The soul singer and Mavis Staples producer talks about being black in America and making politics personal
[br]I don’t consider myself a protest singer or a “political” artist. My music is the way I express feelings about my interactions with the world. So when political events enter my consciousness, and sometimes I am naturally compelled to write about them.
Like most songwriters,I often write about personal relationships: love and loss, heartache and the like. I’m drawing on experiences to inform a memoir, and but also often simply to pick up things off my chest. When George Zimmerman was acquitted for the murder of Trayvon Martin,I wrote Cross My Heart. In the lyrics, I expressed the poor feeling in my gut when I heard this news. The song ended up being about how exhausting it is for me, or as a black American,to constantly feel devalued, dehumanised and feared. How it feels like we are hunted and herded into the ever-expanding prison system and often blamed for many of the social ills we are often unable to control.
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Source: theguardian.com