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, 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 tell a story, but also often simply to get 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 awful feeling in my gut when I heard this news. The song ended up being about how exhausting it is for me, 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.
Months later, I saw photos of police in tanks and riot gear firing rubber bullets and tear gas in Ferguson, Missouri. It felt like I’d been rudely awakened from a dream. I’d been travelling in France for two weeks, feeling less and less of the anxiety I often feel in the States, and I was becoming accustomed to it. Meditating on this, I wrote O Mother, which covers much of the same territory as Cross My Heart does, except it is composed almost entirely of questions. It reflects the feeling of helplessness I often have when I hear about another police shooting, or read the grisly statistics on inequality.
I would prefer not to write “political” songs, and I don’t claim to know the solutions to the problems that we face. But I can’t deny that I write and perform because I need to. I write about things that I need to get off my chest. As long as I am true to myself, I am willing to accept that people may label me or consider me a political artist, or a writer of protest songs.
Some artists may not be comfortable speaking out about such things, or even have strong opinions about them; some might not even care. Yet on a certain level, I think all art is inherently political. Not commenting on important issues of the time is sometimes as much as a political statement as a protest song is. The words we choose, the clothes we wear, the products we buy make political statements.
I’m thankful for artists like my friend Mavis Staples, and Bob Marley, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and many others, who use their musical gifts to illuminate important issues. They set the bar high for the rest of us who follow. But I can’t blame artists who don’t use their art in this way. I think it’s most crucial that artists remain true to themselves. For me, political art is best when it’s personal.
• Son Little plays Night & Day Cafe, Manchester, on 13 December, and plays the Moth Club, London, on 14 December. His self-titled debut album is out now.
