Lonnie Holley’s fifth album, Tonky, is a work of multitudes. It delights in the various. It follows unlikely trails, expands on themes that other artists would pass over, and invites a depth of thought and engagement rarely found in contemporary music. It does not always make its point with broad, sweeping statements or with devilishly complex musical detail, but that doesn’t mean that it is not ambitious. Tonky’s expansiveness lies in its spirit of collaboration, in its wholeheartedness and in its easy leaps across genre boundaries. It begins with an epic nine-minute spoken word piece based on a brooding, minimal rhythm and augmented by dramatic strings. It tells of Holley’s youth, the hardships he endured while working the land. In the background is the spectre of racially motivated violence, both at a personal level and as a kind of state-sponsored form of coercion and modern slavery. As is so often the case in Holley’s work, there are twin strands of anger and exaltation: anger at injustice, exaltation in the emancipatory possibilities of music and performance and the oral tradition.
Seed leads straight into Life, which feels natural in the way that opposites often attract. Life is a little over a minute long and features the instantly recognisable harp of Mary Lattimore. In its short span, it encompasses cosmic jazz, free folk, new age music and spoken word soul, and is one of the most beautiful moments in Holley’s whole catalogue. It’s also the first of a series of expertly judged collaborations. Others include The Burden, with Angel Bat Dawid providing a slippery clarinet part that pulls the tune intriguingly in the direction of free jazz. Rapper Open Mike Eagle adds an intense verse to the low-key beats of The Same Stars, and Holley’s tête-à-tête with fellow jazz poet Alabaster de Plume on Strength of a Song proves an inspired meeting of minds, with Holley’s impassioned singing using de Plume’s simple sax lines (and some well-placed piano) as a kind of musical ladder.
Did I Do Enough, which has Jesca Hoop on backing vocals, is one of Tonky’s most moving, reflective moments. What’s Going On, with Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock providing some powerful backing, chugs and churns like an indie-soul Beefheart, while I Looked Over My Shoulder (Billy Woods rapping a fiery verse) sounds like a welcome mash-up of Dr John and experimental hip hop group clipping. Comparisons to Dr John and Beefheart are apt in more ways than one: Holley exudes the same sense of manic control over his music, inhabiting the space around him like the most charismatic of ringmasters.
Holley asks us to ‘step right up’ on That’s Not Art, That’s Not Music, taking his ringmaster persona to new levels. Here, he makes the listener question themselves and their role in the artistic pact. He also questions the relationship between music and politics. Throughout, Holley’s political and moral viewpoints are on display (as if it could be any other way with the world like it is currently). ‘Protest with love,’ he implores on the song of the same name, and We Was Kings in the Jungle, Slaves in the Field reaches back through the millennia to make a salient point about the way BIPOC communities are still poorly treated today. Of course, this being Holley, it is also an atmospheric slab of afrofuturism, combining righteous jazz poetry with dark, minimal electronics.
Tonky ends with its most hopeful moment, A Change Is Gonna Come. Although ostensibly unrelated to the Sam Cooke classic of the same name, it shares much of that song’s sense of positive protest. It is a soulful plea for empathy (and what is soul music if not a manifestation of empathy), and a hand reached out towards a better future. Lonnie Holley has been on this planet for three-quarters of a century now; he has seen the growth and subsequent erosion of civil rights, and he recognises better than anyone that music and art are part of a front line in a battle which is still being fought. On Tonky, he makes his point with eloquence, fire and an impressive eye for poetic detail.
Tonky (March 21st, 2025) Jagjaguwar