Son Little’s “O Mother” Video Debuts

COMPASSIONATE ANGER OF SON LITTLE’S “O MOTHER” VIDEO PREMIERES VIA THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

It’s tragic that Son Little’s new song “O Mother” is so absolutely relevant. In a better world it would be unnecessary, never written. Matters of racism and oppression would be relegated to history, lessons learned and transcended. Recent events tell us otherwise. And with the compassionate anger of “O Mother,” Son Little addresses these matters from an intensely personal perspective. The New Yorker compared the track to Marvin Gaye’s powerful “Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)” calling it “a deeply personal slow jam which takes up where Gaye’s song left off.”

“O Mother” was inspired by an unintended media blackout for the artist while on tour in France.  Upon returning to the US, news about the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and others abruptly ended the euphoria at his European reception. The resulting sense of turmoil and sadness were soon translated into an anguished soul vocal set within a dubbed-out Motown groove.

“Can I love the world but hate how it makes me feel,” Little sings in a particularly heartrending line. As he explains, “I’m having the time of my life and then everything I’m reading is giving me the worst possible feeling. This massive insult repeated over and over again. It was a kind of survivors’ guilt. This feeling that I was doing something wrong by enjoying this freedom while someone back home was getting shot for just nothing.”

Little has now released a video to accompany the song via The Wall St. Journal. The clip for “O Mother” presents a highly personal dreamscape, images of Little floating through space juxtaposed with lone wolves confined to cages and roaming through the snow.

“I read a story about these wolf/dog hybrids,” Little explains. “They’d been abandoned by people and when they were caught, they were usually killed.  And I realized the parallels between the wolf dogs and Black and Latino men. Our society trains us to look and act dangerous (and trains others to look at us that way), and then punishes us for it; sometimes even when we resist the training. Even though these animals can be dangerous, they’re just beautiful creatures trying to survive in the world.”