(February 27, 2022) The song and video for “How Do We Heal (feat. Son Little and Bryce The Third),” the latest song by the soul/funk band The Suffers, was inspired by the kind of gut punch pain that can pop up on our You Tube feed or Facebook timeline at any time. Those infamous videos of the last moments of the life of George Floyd when he died in police custody. The photos or a video homage to Sandra Bland, who also died in a jail cell.
What do we do with the rage, confusion, and pain that we feel for these victims and their surviving family members who will never get what they truly want, even if those parents, siblings or children get what the American legal system calls justice? And after more than 400 years of Black people witnessing communal and individual injustice, we still do not have an answer to the question that vocalist Kam Franklin and her bandmates posit in the song’s title.
(February 27, 2022) The song and video for “How Do We Heal (feat. Son Little and Bryce The Third),” the latest song by the soul/funk band The Suffers, was inspired by the kind of gut punch pain that can pop up on our You Tube feed or Facebook timeline at any time. Those infamous videos of the last moments of the life of George Floyd when he died in police custody. The photos or a video homage to Sandra Bland, who also died in a jail cell.
What do we do with the rage, confusion, and pain that we feel for these victims and their surviving family members who will never get what they truly want, even if those parents, siblings or children get what the American legal system calls justice? And after more than 400 years of Black people witnessing communal and individual injustice, we still do not have an answer to the question that vocalist Kam Franklin and her bandmates posit in the song’s title.
Franklin said that writing this powerful song that honors Black men and women who are recent victims of police or vigilante violence was an act of therapy and healing for her. She’d be on a streaming or social media site viewing puppy or kitten videos when seemingly out of nowhere she’d click on the link of live stream or recording of a fatal encounter that an unarmed Black person had with police. The cumulative impact of seeing these videos impacted Franklin mentally and physically.
Like many of us, Franklin monitored the cases as the wheels of justice slowly ground. Some victims like Floyd and his family received justice. More often, justice proved to be elusive. Regardless, Franklin said the question of asked in the song’s title can never be fully answered if root, systematic causes of the hurt are never address (and increasingly cannot even be discussed.) Check out the song “How Can We Heal” and the accompanying video here.
By Howard Dukes