Oh Me Oh My

‘Oh Me Oh My’ is both elegant and ferocious. It is stirring in one moment and a balm the next. It details histories both global and personal. • Lonnie Holley’s harrowing youth and young manhood in the Jim Crow South are well-told at this point - his sale into a different home as a child for just a bottle of whiskey; his abuse at the infamous Mount Meigs correctional facility for boys; the destruction of his art environment by the Birmingham airport expansion. But Holley’s music is less a performance of pain endured and more a display of perseverance, of relentless hope.