Black Music Month
For Black folks, our relationship with music runs far deeper than the nostalgia that captures the moments and memories we associate with each song.
As part of NewsOne’s celebration of Black Music Month, Stephen Hill joined us to talk about the importance of Black music throughout American history.
Walking means something. It is not just a step pattern. It is a declaration, a way of holding down Blackness, neighborhood, lineage and the people.
Nina Simone and Same Cooke are two Black artists who decided the message was more important than their commercial success.
As Big Chief Shaka Zulu explained, when drum machine, lyric, rhythm, and movement lock in, dancers enter trance.
Hundreds of days of sewing, prayer, thought, sacrifice, creative energy, and communal labor gather in the beadwork.
The brilliance of Ryan Coogler's Sinners Surreal Montage is it doesn't treat Black music as a straight line, but rather as a circle.
The Surreal Montage sequence in "Sinners" doesn’t move like a history lesson; it moves the way memory does, vivid, out of order, alive.
The history of Black music is unfortunately filled with exploitative contracts, unpaid royalties, and stolen music sold as “covers.”
Music isn't background noise. For so many of us, it's the thread woven through every significant moment of our lives.