‘Light in the Morning’ or ‘Did I not mention ‘Firebrand’ yet?!’

Around February, my friend Ryan Harvey, his mates of RAAST and me met up in London. We were to practice some of Ryan’s songs, mostly inspired by the Arab Spring, for his new record. We practiced and played and hung out and discussed, drank ales and failed at a pub quiz. We produced some lovely scratch recordings for some of his songs.

One of those scratch versions grew into a recorded version, it’s called ‘Light in the Morning’ (I’m on it, Raast is on it and the amazing Bell’s Roar is on it too!) and you can listen to it here. When Ryan was in London he told us of this new record label called ‘Firebrand’ he was setting up with Tom Morello, of Rage Against The Machine…! The aim of Firebrand is to be a political artists label, serving the interest of the artist and not the label bosses. Well, here’s Ryan and Son of Nun being interviewed about it.

The song ‘Light in The Morning’ talks about people rising up, even when they are being repressed from all sides. And it tells of the politicians gaining power by oppressing the people they claim to serve.. The version that got recorded is the version that Ryan wrote for the Baltimore protests after the police murder of Freddie Gray. Although the lyrics are set in an American context, police violence is everywhere. So whether Ryan sings it about Cairo or Baltimore or when I sing it about the Schilderswijk protests following the murder of Mitch Henriquez, it still rings true.

‘A whole generation that’s been scared of dreaming, is rising like light in the morning’