Lonnie Holley: “My legacy is showing people how to get over the hurdles”

“All my life, I’ve been on an adventure – I’ve experienced the trials and tribulations of what it means to be human,” Lonnie Holley says. “I’ve survived and I am the living change, the root that forces its way into the ground.”

At 75, artist and musician Lonnie Holley has lived to tell the tale of an often traumatic and chaotic life. Over the last four decades, he has established an international reputation as an ‘outsider’ or ‘folk’ artist, constructing enigmatic sculptures on Black identity from society’s junk material. His pieces are gargantuan yet detailed, intricately observed yet sweepingly emphatic. However, it’s in his other medium – music – that the often overwhelming horror of his story is perhaps most unflinchingly confronted and exorcised. On his latest (sixth) solo album, Tonky, Holley is at his most personal, reaching towards the profound.

“Art and music are like joined twins for me,” Holley says in his softly lilting Southern accent over a call from his Atlanta home. “I sing about what’s emotionally driving me at the time. I write and make everything on the spot, so it’s a pure reflection of whatever comes from within.”

Read the interview in Crack Magazine.

[This piece was published on 10/04/25]