The Zach Longoria Project just released a beautiful and powerful video for their new song "Rain Won't You Please Fall". It's full of striking images from the recent protests in Louisville against racial injustice. I asked Zach about the images and about the new song and video.
Laura Shine: For the new song "Rain Won't You Please Fall", when did you write this and what inspired it?
Zach Longoria: I wrote this in late July. I had been going to the protest quietly over the course if the summer to observe, feel, and understand this movement that was not only gripping our city but this nation. What I walked away with was an incredible sense of helplessness. I did not know what to do to help. There seemed to be too much hurt. Too much pain. These issues of racial injustice are not new to our city. They stretch generations. As I watched and listened over the summer I seemed to increasingly feel as though we had lost our way as human beings. We don’t see people anymore. We see us vs them...black verse police, right verse left. We don’t see a broken system and a hurting people. We don’t even acknowledge our shared humanity in fighting that. That is what inspired this song. I want people to be moved and reflect on what this city went through and continues to go through. I want them to see this video and see beauty, love, Pain, but more importantly see people. In the song I wrote about how small we are. We are on a tiny planet, hurling through space, around a star. We are all we have. I hope people see this and feel moved in their humanity no matter where you sit on the political spectrum in 2020.
You include some powerful imagery in the video from the recent protests in downtown Louisville. Did you shoot the pictures or how did you acquire the footage?
So during my time at the protest I became friends with a local photographer by the name of Jon Cherry. His photographs had been featured in publications like the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and the Huffington Post. Jon and I struck up a friendship and would meet every Sunday for a socially distanced coffee just to kind of talk about and reflect on the week of protesting that had happened. When I told Jon about my idea and later showed him a demo of this song, he was all in. Over the course of the next few weeks Jon and I combed his endless catalog of photos and we put together a group of photographs we felt best showed the depth and raw emotion of the protest.
Who is performing the spoken word piece at the beginning of the video?
The spoken word portion is by Louisville spoken word artist and activist Lance Newman.
Who is the woman at the end? That's a great photo.
The woman at the end is unknown, but I too love that photo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tOJ43wb9Ek&feature=youtu.be
